Let The Galaxy Burn Read online

  Athellenas flexed his hand encased in his power glove, feeling its power field leap into life around it. He raised his uncased hand, and brought it down in a swift chopping motion – at the signal, the tactical squad’s bolters spat a rain of explosive steel.

  Another wave of cavalry went down but they were closer now – and their leader, an officer in a ragged, stained parody of a uniform, still lived, holding his sabre high, leading his troops into the fray.

  Shots kept coming and the assault squad sergeant, Kytellias, took a hit on the arm.

  ‘Status, Kytellias?’

  ‘Not serious.’ replied the sergeant. ‘Lost a couple of fingers. Ready for your order.’

  ‘Hold, Kytellias. Hold.’

  Another volley from the devastator and tactical squads cut down a swathe more horsemen, but the enemy were within laspistol range now. Athellenas’s auto-sense warning icons flashed against his retina as one shot rang off his shoulder pad. He aimed his bolt pistol and took revenge for the firer’s presumption, the shot taking a cultist in the neck and sending him somersaulting backwards off his horse.

  They were close. Their horses were foaming. The officer raised his sword, ready to bring it down on the first Marine in his path.

  ‘Charge!’ yelled Athellenas. Before the word was out of his throat, Kytellias and his men had rocketed out of their dugouts, jump packs roaring. They came down on the heads of the nearest riders and each one cut down his opposite man. Kytellias himself sought his next target without breaking stride. Ignoring the cultists whose blades and clubs were turned aside by his armour, the sergeant ran at full pelt towards the officer.

  He wants revenge, thought Athellenas. Revenge for his fingers. In any other army it would be considered ill-discipline – but for the Black Templars, for all Space Marines, everything they did was revenge.

  Athellenas led the second charge himself, driving into the confused horsemen with the tactical squad. Plunging into the swirling dust and screams of the dying, he ducked the first blade and struck back with his power fist, a great pendulous blow that lifted rider and horse and threw them seven metres in a shower of blue sparks from the power field.

  ‘Again!’ yelled the officer. ‘Again! Hit them again!’ But his horsemen were too scattered and confused to regroup and counter-charge. Those who still had mounts were trying to wrestle their horses back under control through the hail of bolt pistol shells and the screeching walls of chainsword blades that lanced out of the dust and cut down a cultist with every stroke.

  Athellenas’s auto-senses picked out Kytellias, duelling with the officer. The officer was good, using his height advantage on his horse to keep Kytellias’s power sword at bay. An aristocrat, thought Athellenas, raised in the saddle just as Athellenas and his Marines had been raised on the battlefield. He met Kytellias’s every thrust, turning the blade so its power field didn’t shatter his own.

  Then Kytellias stopped toying with him and brought the power sword down so fast that the officer didn’t have time to cry out as its point came down on his shoulder and carved him open. The officer dropped his sword, convulsed as his blood flooded out onto the dry earth, then toppled to the ground. His horse bolted and took many of the surviving animals with it. Those who were without mounts still fought, but they were so consumed with madness and confusion that the Assault and Tactical Marines picked them off at will with the chainsword tooth or the bolter shell.

  ‘Sergeant Kytellias, report.’ said Athellenas over his communicator.

  ‘Seventy per cent enemy casualties, sir, no losses. Injuries nominal.’

  Athellenas hurried forward through the clouds of dust and gunsmoke. He looked in the direction of the cultist spacecraft, auto-senses magnifying the image and picking out the sounds of fhe approaching horde.

  The rest of the cultists were following. The Manskinner was acting true to form: the cavalry had been sent to draw out a counter-charge and break up the Marines’ position, so the main body of cultists would hit a compromised Marine line.

  ‘Valerian?’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Take your squad and fall back to the city’s outskirts. Prepare another defensive position. Kytellias and I will join you there.’

  Silence. Then…

  ‘Sir, we cannot fall back. We cannot surrender this position.’

  There was a quality in Valerian’s voice that every commander came to know. The sound of rebellion.

  ‘Valerian, you will fall back immediately. The enemy is too great. We cannot face them here.’ Athellenas could see the Manskinner, claw swinging as he ran, the mass of cultists swarming around him.

  ‘Sir, I cannot retreat in the face of the enemy. The Inititate Doctoris states as much—’

  ‘Questions of doctrine will be dealt with on Terra. For now you will follow orders.’

  Again, silence.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ But this time, rebellion was clear in Valerian’s voice.

  Athellenas signalled to the tactical and assault squads, and they moved as one back through the temple towards the outskirts of the city, leaving behind them a field of two hundred dead and an enemy who would not give up.

  THE MANSKINNER KICKED over the worn marble icon of the Imperial eagle and watched it shatter on the ground. All around him, his men were taking out their rage on the fabric of the temple, firing shots into the carved walls, defiling the altars with their own blood.

  ‘Where are fhey?’ yelled Recoba. ‘Where are the dogs? Cowardly dogs! Too afraid to face Khorne’s wrath!’ An untrained eye would see Recoba as a burned-out corporal running to fat, now turned to madness with the worship of the Blood God. But the truth was that he was strong – that his bulk was muscle, not fat, and he held the minds of his men in bonds of iron that the Blood God’s worship had only forged tighter.

  He spoke for all his men, and the Manskinner knew all his men were angry.

  They had run. These Marines, these defenders of humanity, who should have died a hundred times over rather than yield one inch of ground to fhe Blood God’s followers: they had retreated. They had fallen back in the face of heretics. They had surrendered this place, a symbol of their Emperor’s false godhood, a place that was as holy as could be.

  This was wrong. This was not the way of the Imperium. They were supposed to underestimate the Blood God’s power in their arrogance, and die beneath fhe blades of His army as it swept them aside.

  And his men, they all felt the same. They had been robbed of their battle, the ultimate deceit. The bloodlust was building up in them unchecked, a destroying hunger that only violence would satisfy.

  ‘Brothers!’ The Manskinner felt the words of blood hot in his mind. He had to use them wisely, and mould the minds of his men just as he wished. ‘The enemy has shown its true face! Not merely weak, but cowardly! Deceitful! With their trickery they defy all that the Blood God has shown you! But we will not fall prey to their lies. We will wait here, in this, the very place they hold as a symbol of their weakling Emperor, and gather our strength before we strike and brand our victory against the spirit of the Imperium!’

  Recoba strode forward, out of the gathered crowd. ‘We cannot wait! By the Blood God’s throne, the enemy are in flight! We must pursue them and ran them down, not cower like children!’

  The Manskinner fixed Recoba with a glare. The man was as dangerous as he was useful. He, amongst all the cultists, must be brought to heel. The Manskinner raised his claw so the steel tips hovered in front of Recoba’s face.

  ‘Recoba, my brother, you know nothing of the ways of the enemy. The Blood God has shown me the truth about the feeble ways of Man. The Marines wish to draw us out in pursuit so they can destroy one part of our force at a time, until finally there are none left to take to Macharia and begin the slaughter. They will use the commands of the Blood God against us, knowing we will become blind with bloodlust. Even now, when you wish to pursue, Kireeah’s forces and half of your men have yet to arrive here. You would take on the Marines with a th
ird, with a quarter, of your forces, only to let them run once more when the rest come to avenge them?’

  The Manskinner turned once more to the rest of the cultists, who listened to his every word as if they were those of the Blood God himself. ‘We will not let them, my brothers! We will all strike as one, so they will not break the back of this army before we reach the spaceport! Blood for the Blood God!’

  Even now, the Manskinner could see a cohort of Gathalamor men gathering around Recoba, the old corporal’s face twisted further with hate. He would break off, and lead them right into the Marines’ trap.

  Well, let him die, thought the Manskinner. Maybe his men would inflict some suffering on the Marines before the rest of the horde could reach them. It was for the good. To stop Recoba would be to fight him and his men, and he could not afford to have his army fall apart now. Let the Marines think their plan is working, that they will eliminate the Blood God’s army piece by piece.

  It will be all the more joyous when the enemy’s skulls litter the ground of Empyrion IX, and our army is on its way to begin the holy slaughter.

  Let him die.

  THE MIDDAY SUN cast few shadows through the outskirts of the deserted town. Empyrion IX’s only settlement had been abandoned, along with the rest of the planet, when it was realised that its mineral deposits were far scarcer than the Adeptus Mechanicus Geologis had thought. And so it had stayed, for hundreds of years, until today, when the fates had chosen it for the conflict that would decide the fate of a billion lives.

  Athellanas had chosen to set up the second Space Marine line in a string of decrepit residential blocks, ugly grey blank plascrete. His squad was in the upper floors of one block, with the devastators in the neighbouring building. Below them, the broad streets, designed to take mining machines and trucks of ore, were empty, scattered with fallen masonry and fragments of broken glass. Everything was quiet. Even the air was still. It was only Athellenas’s enhanced auto-senses that registered the scent of blood.

  ‘They haven’t actually… said anything, sir.’ Kytellias, speaking to his commander face-to-face, was choosing his words carefully, for this was an area a Marine would normally never encounter. The area of rebellion. It was a dark, unfamiliar taste in the air. ‘But I can tell. The way they move, their voices. They… they’re not happy, sir. Not happy with you.’

  Commander Athellenas looked at his assault sergeant. Like all the Black Templars, he had been tested without his knowledge back on Terra for the risk of disobedience – and Kytellias had been designated the most likely to rebel in Athellenas’s whole command. Kytellias’s capacity for initiative and self-reliance, that made him an ideal assault sergeant, at the same time made him headstrong and potentially dangerous. Yet he was the Marine Athellenas could most trust here.

  This was not a question of a Marine being required to sell his life for the fraction of a victory. This danger was not born of cowardice or malice. Valerian, and perhaps others, were being ordered to abandon their whole system of values, to change the way they saw right and wrong. Retreat in the face of the enemy – in the face of Chaos – was a fundamental evil to a Marine.

  He was asking his men to do wrong. What commander, what Space Marine, had that right?

  ‘You have done well to tell me this, Kytellias,’ he said. ‘What of your squad?’

  ‘They are sound, but no more.’

  ‘And your hand?’

  Kytellias looked down at his wounded hand. His blood had crystallised quickly around the plasteel, where the lasgun blast had sheared off three fingers. ‘I still have my trigger finger, sir. No operational concerns.’

  ‘Good. The next wave will be poorly led, but larger. We will use the streets. You will use your squad to draw the enemy in, funnel them into the street below. My squad and Valerian’s will open fire on them from above. Understood?’

  ‘Understood, sir.’

  Kytellias’s jump pack flared and he leapt through the wide, glassless window, across to the roof of the opposite building to enact the equipment rituals with his squad.

  ‘Valerian?’

  ‘Sir?’ Valerian’s voice was clear with suppressed anger over the communicator.

  ‘Have your squad move into position. The second wave is here.’

  ‘Nothing on the auspex, sir.’

  ‘They’re close. They will be hard to break at first, but soon their formation will disperse. When Kytellias withdraws, you will open fire. Kytellias will chase down enemy stragglers.’

  ‘And then, sir? The next wave?’

  ‘You have your orders, sergeant.’

  Athellenas and his squad gathered on the fourth floor, bolters checked, ready to turn the street below into a river of fire.

  The horizon shifted, turned dark, and began to spread through the outskirts towards them.

  The second wave.

  ‘FOR EVERY GREEN and sainted isle, of Gathalamor’s blue sea, for the sake of every man that’s lost, we’ll die or we’ll be free!’

  Recoba’s spirit rose with pride. His men, his personal command within the Gathalamor army, had sided with him to a man – fully a third of the cultists in number. As they marched in time, as they had been drilled, it was like they were back on fair Gathalamor, before they had lost so many brothers and friends to the idiocy of the Guard’s commanders, before they had first encountered that madman with the voice of a god who took them at their lowest hour and changed them into his own private army.

  They didn’t need the Imperium. But they didn’t need the Manskinner either. He was just another fool who would throw away the lives of Recoba’s men. Well, if they must die, they would die face-to-face with the enemy, the Marines.

  Space Marines. When the Guard threw billions of men to be chewed up by whichever foe their wrath fell upon, it was the Marines who survived, who delivered the killing blow to an enemy the Guardsmen’s deaths had laid open.

  They would know what it was like to feel that utter despair. Recoba would see to that.

  At the front of the marching formation some of the men were falling out of step, breaking into a run to get to grips with the Marines who lurked in the residential blocks around them. As they headed down the town’s main road, lasguns ready, still singing, the men were breaking off, kicking down doors, hunting for the enemy.

  His men. Recoba was proud. They were still his men, even after all the Imperium and the Manskinner had put them through.

  The smell came first, the burning, metallic reek of fuel. Then the white noise as they descended from the sky on their exhaust jets, dropping down right on top of the formation.

  ‘Fire!’ yelled Recoba. ‘Open fire!’

  But many of the men had no time to pull the triggers before the Black Templars were upon them, their black armour gleaming in the bright midday sun, black crosses on their white shoulder pads flashing, chainsword teeth tearing through the cultists, bolt pistols blazing.

  Recoba saw one of the Marines, no, two, swamped by cultists who, having lost their weapons in the crash, threw themselves at the assault squad and dragged them down under the weight of the mob. The cultists grabbed the only thing at hand that could be used as a weapon – chunks of plascrete torn from the ground by heavy weapons fire – and set to work on the Marines. Recoba himself opened fire with his bolter, even as the two Marines’ ceramite armour gave way beneath the pounding of plascrete. He heard them crack open, and felt it, too, as it gave all his men the heart not to break, to stand and fight.

  The Marines were used to enemies running from them. Not this time. These were Gathalamor men. Gathalamor men could never be beaten.

  The rest of the assault squad fell back towards the nearest building, leaving a trail of broken bodies behind them, but ever more cultists – no, not cultists, Guardsmen once more – closed in behind them, volleys of lasgun shots sending up a wall of white-hot light around the Marines. Another fell, sparks cascading from his ruptured armour, still firing even as he died beneath the rifle butts and bare fists
of the Guardsmen.

  Recoba joined his men as they poured forward after the Marines, formation forgotten, some still singing, all of them eager for the fight now that blood had been tasted at last.

  ‘All troops, rapid fire. Target saturation pattern.’ Athellenas watched as incandescent death lanced down from the upper floors of the building overlooking the street, tearing a hole through the main body of cultists. Lascannon blasts gouged furrows in the broken road surface, and frag missiles burst into clouds of fire, sweeping across the road, engulfing a dozen cultists at a time. Heavy bolter shots stitched a bloody path through the cultists, and the heavy plasma blasts fell like huge drops of liquid fire that flowed as water but melted anything they touched. The noise was immense, a vast roar of explosive, mechanical rage, mixed with the screams of the dying and the hiss of burning flesh. But Athellenas’s auto-senses filtered out the din, leaving only the communicator channels clear.

  ‘Kytellias here. Taking fire, three men down. Counter-attacking.’ The first losses, then. Now Athellenas’s tactics had cost the lives of Marines. Rebellion would be an even sterner foe now.

  The bolters of Athellenas’s tactical squad added their own fire, each Marine picking a cultist target and spearing him with a bolt of screaming steel. The formation was nothing now and the streets were full of a swirling, burning mass of men, caught up in equal measures of panic and hate, scrambling over one another, howling, dying by the dozen. The cultists didn’t fall back, but they were weak and broken.

  ‘Kytellias, charge.’

  Through a haze of static and battle-din, Kytellias’s voice came over the communicator. ‘Yes, sir! Squad, by sections! Charge!’

  The blades of Kytellias’s squad tasted blood once more as the Marines carved their way through the panicked cultists. A few of the heathens ran; others fought on half-blind, and died without ceremony. They stood their ground in knots of resistance, but the Marines showed nothing but disgust for their broken enemies, cutting them down like reeds in a thunderstorm.

  Kytellias’s power sword accounted for most, flashing like a harnessed bolt of lightning, every stroke taking a pagan’s head.