‘Malfons!’ shouted Bohemond. ‘Well met, brother!’
‘Continue attack run,’ ordered Koorland. ‘All fleets converge. Establish blockade pattern. Iron Knights, support the Fists Exemplar.’
‘Understood and confirmed, Chapter Master Koorland. And Koorland?’
‘Yes, brother?’
‘You have our regret at your loss. Moving in to support the Fists Exemplar now.’
All around the moon, the night of the void turned to mottled day as the Space Marines broke off their charge to the moon, and dealt death to the remaining ork fleet. Caught within expertly intersected fields of fire, the ork vessels and captured Imperial mercantile ships were torn to pieces.
‘Now the real work begins. What will you do, brother?’ said Bohemond with an appraising look. ‘Join the fray, or remain here? You are the last of the Imperial Fists. Perhaps you should not risk yourself.’
‘Who will lead the attack? You?’
‘If you so command, then I will gladly lead,’ said Bohemond.
Koorland examined Bohemond’s scarred face, but could not read the fragment of expression displayed there.
‘All fleets of the Last Wall, prepare to board the moon,’ Koorland ordered. ‘Adeptus Mechanicus arks, the way is clear for you to move in and begin your deployment.’ Koorland turned to Bohemond. ‘I will lead an attack party myself.’
Bohemond gave him a wild look. ‘In that case, brother, I have a gift for you.’
The ork bombardment had ceased, and now the halls of the Abhorrence resounded with the activity of men. As bondsmen and the servants of the Black Templars’ forge ran towards the vessel’s damaged sections, squads of Space Marines jogged towards their drop-halls and the embarkation deck.
In Bohemond’s personal arming chambers, silence held sway. The cowled bondsmen still went about their business as if nothing had occurred, checking Bohemond’s collection of weapons for upset and damage, and setting right that which had been disturbed. Bohemond led Koorland through his spartan dayroom, through a small weapons workshop, an ammunition store and thence into his innermost sanctum, an octagonal room lined floor to ceiling with weaponry. Most of it was of fine Imperial make, adorned with emblems of the shield and the Templar cross, honour chains and shackles coiled carefully onto pegs beneath each mount. Intermingled were a number of weapons of alien make, of all types from the obvious to the obscure of purpose.
‘You are surprised?’ said Bohemond, when he caught Koorland examining the xenos devices. ‘These are my trophies, many taken from worthy opponents, unclean though they were… But there would be no honour in employing the weapons of the alien against the alien. What I have for you is of far nobler origin.’ He pointed to an alcove where waited a large object covered with a white silk shroud, black Templar crosses repeated hundreds of times over it in an interlocking pattern. Bohemond nodded at one of his arming bondsmen. The man came forward and tugged the shroud free.
Underneath was a suit of Terminator armour, painted in the bold yellow of the Imperial Fists.
‘This suit is one of the very first of the Indomitus armours manufactured,’ said Bohemond, indicating the familiar planed helm and heavy-gauge chest plating. ‘Its name is Fidus Bellator, and it was fashioned in the closing years of the great Heresy war.’ He looked at Koorland. ‘I doubted you, Koorland. I cannot deny it. I have yet to be convinced you are suitable to lead the assembled might of the Last Wall. Yet you have proved yourself in other ways. You are confident, sure of purpose, tactically astute. You are worthy of the rank of Chapter Master, and so I may yet change my mind. In recognition, and in friendship, I give this to you.’
‘I do not know what to say, High Marshal,’ said Koorland wonderingly. Much of his Chapter’s supplies and materiel had been destroyed around Ardamantua, though there would of course be armour and weapons still aboard their great star fortress of the Phalanx and in their barracks on Terra. But were there any Terminator suits left? He doubted it. They were all lost, along with the First Company.
‘Then say nothing,’ said Bohemond. ‘The armour is not dishonoured, for Fidus Bellator has borne these colours before. Once it resided in the armouriums of the Phalanx. If it makes it easier to accept, let us agree that I do nothing more than return it home.’
‘You do me a great honour. I cannot repay you.’
‘I do,’ agreed Bohemond. ‘And you can repay me. Repay me with glory, Chapter Master. Avenge your brothers.’
Ten
The gate
An electric buzzing supplanted Koorland’s senses as his substance was projected through the warp. His body diffused, becoming a tingling sensation and little else. Thought fled as his consciousness momentarily disconnected from reality, but it did not cease — rather his sense of self became something else, a raw awareness without thought, a thing of feeling. Rationality was inconceivable. Time was irrelevant. There was only being, nothing else.
A wall of pain interrupted his contemplations. His body passed out of the warp, his wargear and flesh rearranging themselves into solid forms. A blaze of light and rush of vapour, and he was striding forward, gun raised, into a roughly hewn chamber cluttered with ramshackle machinery and orks. A subsidiary power nexus for the surface energy weapons, its destruction would knock out several dozen energy cannons, or so their Adeptus Mechanicus allies had informed them.
The xenos recovered quickly from their surprise at Koorland appearing in their midst, abandoning the tasks they were about at the machines, and launched themselves at the Space Marine with a ferocious roaring. Their weapons rebounded from his Terminator armour without effect. Koorland gunned them down with his storm bolter, blasting them into bouncing pieces. Ork slave creatures squealed and ran from him. Rushing air behind him signalled other successful teleports. The sensorium of his borrowed suit pinged into life, triangulating his location, linking up with the auspex suites of his ad hoc squad.
‘Teleport successful. Target achieved. Strike Team Slaughter, respond,’ he voxed. He could not turn easily in the massive armoured suit, not without presenting his back to the doorway.
‘Moscht here,’ spoke a voice into his helm. The Space Marines sounded off, their squad icons and vital signs flicking into life upon Koorland’s helm display.
‘Ulferic here.’
‘Donafen here.’
‘Arbalt here.’
‘Holde here.’
Two Black Templars, a brother of the Fists Exemplar, an Excoriator, and an Iron Knight made up his small command.
‘Zero casualties,’ said Koorland.
‘Praise be,’ said Ulferic and Arbalt.
Koorland ignored their odd expression of piety. ‘Thus far, our Adeptus Mechanicus allies have been proven correct. According to their information, the primary target is this way — power generators for the ork gravity weapons. Let us ensure they never fire again. Move out and engage.’
Koorland went first, the others close behind. The combat chatter of other Terminator squads crackled in his ears. Three hundred Terminators worked their way through the tunnels. The moon shook with impacts from the surface, shortly joined by the detonation of demolition charges nearer to hand. Data-screed and vox-reports kept Koorland abreast of the battle, so much information it took the superior mind of a Space Marine to comprehend.
‘Target Gamma destroyed.’
‘Report heavy fire, sector nineteen forty-three.’
‘Target Zeta damaged and on fire. Proceeding to secondary objectives.’
Koorland’s squad stamped through corridors carved from grey stone, primitive deck plating buckling under the weight of their armour. Squads of orks burst from doorways, weapons blazing. Their large-calibre bullets ricocheted from the thick plates of the Terminator suits in showers of hot sparks. Return fire cut them down. As they passed each rathole and stinking entrance, Holde of the Iron Knights poked the nozzle of his heavy flamer down it and sent a jet of shrieking promethium inside. Burning ork slave creatures ran out, screaming. Soon the twisting corridors were choked with smoke, and the Space Marines switched to artificially enhanced views of their environs.