'Put out a blanket message to all Shinar PDF regiments. Tell them to pull back to the city. The 23rd will hold them here for as long as we can. We will buy them as much time as possible.'
The adjutant gaped. 'We are to hold here? That's suicide!'
'Pass the damn message! Shinar is more important than the 23rd!'
With shaking hands, the adjutant began to relay the message. The captain shouted to the driver of the Chimera to head towards the battle. The man gunned the engines and the vehicle roared across the salt plains.
The men of the 23rd had never seen active service. War had never come to Tanakreg, and the only time the PDF had been required to use live ammunition had been to quell a minor insurgency within Shinar some four decades earlier. Most of the PDF soldiers had never fired on a live target.
Still, Drokan felt clear-headed suddenly. Yes, he would hold the enemy here. He pulled his laspistol from its holster. Just like his men, he had honed his skills on the target field, though he had never fired a shot in anger or defence. But I am a renowned swordsman, he told himself, patting the ornate chainsword at his hip. He had fought in countless tourneys, and had won several medals.
'Ca… Captain Drokan?' said his adjutant. 'The other regiments… they are not responding. Not one of them. I… I think we may be the last regiment within a thousand kilometres of Shinar.'
The captain frowned. 'Ah,' he said, 'I see.' He felt strangely calm. 'Well, pick up my family standard. We go to fight alongside the men.'
The adjutant gaped at the captain.
'Come on, boy!' urged Drokan. The younger man unclipped his safety harness and scrambled across to the other side of the command Chimera. He opened a stowage compartment, and removed a long black case. He straggled with the ornate clasps, but finally popped them open, and pulled out the captain's family standard. It was furled tightly around a telescopic pole. With a nod, the captain leant back in his seat as his Chimera took them into the maelstrom of battle.
Kol Badar strode along the fortified line, gunning down dozens of terrified PDF troopers, their puny bodies torn apart by the force of his combi-bolter. Reaching an enclosed bunker emplacement, he ripped the sealed blast door from its hinges and stooped to enter. It housed half a dozen men and three, rapid firing heavy bolters that were pumping fire into the advancing lines of the Host.
Kol Badar gunned them all down, the walls of the emplacement splashing with their blood as he raked them with fire. Ripping another blast door from its housing, Kol Badar exited the emplacement and began killing once more.
Looking down over the plains beyond the last defensive line, he saw scores of APCs moving forwards in a desperate last-ditch attempt to hold back the Word Bearers. Salt dust kicked up behind the approaching vehicles, and lascannon fire and krak missiles streamed towards the Imperial vehicles from the heavy weapon teams that had gained the bulwark. Several of the advancing vehicles exploded spectacularly, spinning end over end as fuel lines were penetrated.
The Chimera APCs roared to a halt, and over a thousand PDF reserve troopers emerged, las-fire stabbing towards the Word Bearers. Smiling, Kol Badar strode down to meet them.
He knew that subtlety and strategy were not needed, just killing and more killing. It was what his warriors excelled at.
He strode onwards through the hail of gunfire, spraying boltrounds left and right. The salt plains were turning a deep red colour as the porous granules soaked up the gore.
'Tanakreg 23RD!' shouted PDF Captain Drokan. 'Drive them back!' The soldiers screamed as they ran, their lasguns firing and bayonets readied. The captain's adjutant found himself shouting along with them. Hefting the captain's unfurled banner in one hand he began firing his laspistol, even though he could not yet see the foe.
Suddenly he saw the enemy, and he wished that he had not. They were huge, making the PDF soldiers look like children.
They were all going to die, he realised.
Kol Badar raised an eyebrow within his fully enclosed helm as he saw the soldiers running towards him, an officer at their forefront brandishing a roaring chain blade. The towering warlord didn't even bother to raise his combi-bolter, and he began stalking towards the fools running at him and his Anointed warriors. Las-rounds thudded uselessly into him as the distance closed. The officer lifted his chainsword high, his face defiant. Kol Badar almost laughed out loud.
The warlord swatted the blade away dismissively with the back of his power-talon, breaking the man's arm in the process, and clubbed the officer down into the ground with a blow from his combi-bolter. He stamped down heavily on the mewling wretch, and the man's skull shattered like a pulverised egg.
The Anointed cleaved into the PDF troopers, ripping limbs from sockets, tearing heads from bodies. The Coryphaus saw Bokkar drive his chainfist into the body of the diminutive PDF standard bearer, lifting him up into the air before the whirring blades cut the boy in half. The Anointed warrior turned his heavy flamer on the fallen standard, the fabric consumed instantly under the intense heat.
Las-fire sprayed across his back, and he hissed in pain and anger as one of the beams caught him in the back of his knee-joint. He turned and gunned down one of the PDF troopers before they disappeared beneath an inferno of flames, screaming horribly. Kol Badar nodded his head towards the Anointed warrior Bokkar, who acknowledged the Coryphaus with a nod of his own, before his heavy flamer roared again, engulfing another group of soldiers.
Heavy footsteps made the ground tremble, and Kol Badar turned towards the huge form of the Warmonger, the Dreadnought dwarfing even him as it walked through the carnage, potent cannons pumping fire towards enemy vehicles in the distance.
'It is good to crush the enemy on the field of war once more, but this is no battle, Kol Badar,' the ancient war machine boomed. There were few within the Host that would dare call the warlord by his name, but the Warmonger was amongst them. They had fought at each other's sides for millennia. Indeed, Kol Badar had been the Warmonger's Coryphaus when the warrior had been Dark Apostle.
'The enemy is weak,' agreed Kol Badar. 'How I yearn to face a worthy foe,' he added, turning his gaze up into the void of the heavens.
'You think Astartes will come?' boomed the Warmonger hungrily.
'No, I think not,' sighed Kol Badar. 'As much as I wish to face them once more. The Dark Apostle has said that in none of his dream-visions did he see any Astartes come to this world to do battle with us.'
'But minions of the Corpse Emperor will come, will they not? They will come to do battle?'
'Oh, they will come, my friend. They will be marshalling their forces even now.'
'But not Astartes?'
'No, not Astartes.'
'Bah,' snorted the Warmonger. 'It will be just mortals then.'
'Yes, mortals,' said Kol Badar, still staring up into the night sky, as if he could pierce the heavens with his angry gaze. 'One can only hope that they will come in force. At least then there may be a worthy battle.'
The Warmonger stomped off, its cannons firing once more. He saw the daemon engines clawing over the bulwark, multi-legged and spitting great gouts of flame from their maws, while others busied themselves tearing apart enemy tanks with contemptuous ease.
Kol Badar began to follow the Warmonger, to rejoin the battle once again. No, he reminded himself, this was not battle. This was a slaughter.
Varnus coughed, causing a searing, sharp pain in his side. Smoke was all around him, and bodies. No, not just bodies: body parts. He pushed himself to his feet, gasping at the pain that seemed to erupt all over his body, and his head reeled. He put a hand to his forehead and felt wet blood there, but the worst pain was in his side. It was slick with blood, and he winced as he loosened the clips holding his chest-plate in place. He hissed as he pulled out a long shard of metal that had pushed up under the body armour and into his side. He dropped the bloody shard to the floor. Still, he was alive, which was more than could be said for the others splayed out on the chamber floor.