Tough alien flesh met ceramite composite like knuckles flying into a riot shield. Against men, against lesser orks, the line of Terminators would have been enough, but since the death of Eidolica, Zerberyn had never seen orks like these.
A brute in black-and-white bodyplate, almost of a size with the Terminators, hammered its axe into the lead warrior’s gorget protector and bulled him aside. It roared, axe stuck in the Terminator, heaved a Traitor Space Marine up over its head and hurled him off the stair. It took a combat knife under its armpit, grunted, and elbowed the Iron Warrior so hard his plastron buckled under it. Then, severed fibre bundles sputtering with his armour spirit’s fury, the Terminator came about and pulped the rampaging ork with the crackling discharge from his power fist.
But the line had already given.
Zerberyn killed two orks with two shots. Neat. Perfect. A third he demolished with a hammer blow. Tosque and Reoch closed in alongside. Too close for bolter work, the veteran-brothers made a wall of their knives.
‘Break them,’ barked Kalkator. His chainsword chewed messily through an ork’s leg while the full-sized bolter held steady in his bionic grip kicked out bursts of semi-automatic fire into the pack. ‘Would you have our cousins think us weak?’
Growling their rancour, the Terminators slammed back into line and pushed on with visceral determination. In a blizzard of bolter fire they took the crush barrier. Traitor Space Marines spread out onto the walled flyover in both directions and immediately started firing.
‘Brother Karva, rearguard,’ said Zerberyn.
Restricted in the use of his heavy flamer by the close fighting, Karva had held back on the platform until then. Antille came up with him, firing from the chest.
‘Agreed, brother-captain.’
‘Cataphractii forward. Brothers to the flanks. Grind them under your heels.’
‘Iron within!’ blurted a heavily augmented warrior of the Chosen.
‘Iron without!’ came the return, and a shiver ran down Zerberyn’s spine.
They started forwards, like a phalanx from the Age of Bronze re-enacted from a treatise on ancient tactica. Shields forward, shields side, spears up, advancing as one.
As Guilliman had once written: man never changes, so war never changes.
Cutting themselves a path with bolter and power fist, the Iron Warriors and Fists Exemplar ground through the walkway and spilled out onto a pillared concourse of polished stone. A painted fresco showing the IV Legion liberating a verdant world lit the ceiling with vivid metallics. Engaged columns, rounded in the classical High Crusade style and carved in the likeness of unhelmed Legiones Astartes, looked in from the walls. A huge baroque timepiece hung from the ceiling’s central vault. It was broken, too badly shot up even to make out the time of death.
Orks were pouring in through the large streetside doors ahead, as well as from subway accesses and smashed-up refectory rooms to either side. The space was too open for the Space Marines to take them as they had before and so they charged for the doors, firing from the hip as they ran. Sluggers and bolters chewed old stone pillars to the bone and blasted them apart.
Zerberyn and Kalkator moved together into a storm of lead so intense it was like pushing against a falling wall. Where one was forced to let up to slam a clip into his bolter, the other emptied his to cover him. Where one engaged with thunder hammer or chainsword, the other was there at his side.
It was as the Iron Warrior had said: together, they were invincible.
Zerberyn cleared the doors with a thunderstrike of his hammer and chased Kalkator into the street, pistol tracking like a restless auto-targeter.
The grand old buildings were grizzled by gunfire, their ornate blackwork twisted, pierced and scarred. The road, wide enough in this world’s heyday for a squadron of Leman Russ tanks, was filled with vehicle wrecks and blockaded at either end with garishly painted trucks and stacks of burning tyres. A fine red rain fell, gelid and horrible. He had expected it to be warm, but it wasn’t. He looked up. Blood vapour and chemicals pumped from the city’s rendering plants hazed high above street level, obscuring the chimneys and the higher rooftops. Over the rumble of running engines, he could hear a frenzied, guttural chant. He focused his Lyman’s ear, cutting away the immediacy of combat.
He had heard it before, splitting the skies of Eidolica like thunder.
The Beast.
It was everywhere, booming through some kind of public address system rigged up all over the surrounding streets. Another transmitted recording no doubt, but the thought that the ork could be near filled Zerberyn’s chest with fury.
‘This way, little cousin.’
Hugging the station’s columned frontage, Kalkator turned right and kept running. Iron Warriors and Fists Exemplar followed in ones and twos, staccato bursts of bolter fire stippling the walls and barricades.
The warsmith dropped down by the rear of an agricultural sixteen-wheeler that was blocking the way. A mob of orks fired down from its iron roof, laughing, grisly by firelight. Space Marines stepped up and raked the truck in turn.
Heedless of the firefight, Kalkator closed his bionic fingers around the truck’s rear bar and strained. The massive vehicle began to tilt. The gunfire abruptly ceased as eight of the transport’s wheels were pulled away from the ground. A metallic growl strained through the warsmith’s helmet grille as he heaved the truck over and onto its side.
Iron Warriors poured through the breached barricade, laughing bitterly as they gunned down crushed and dazed orks where they lay. Tosque unpinned a frag grenade and rolled it between the wheels of the abutting vehicle. Blast debris blew out around their ankles as the Fists Exemplar followed in. Brother Karva hosed the street with promethium. Zerberyn was the last.
Looking back, he saw scores of ramshackle ork bikes manoeuvering through the roadblocks at the street’s opposite end. From the vandalised tenement habs across the way, portcullis-like sheets of metal were being withdrawn over windows and doorways. Orks roughly jammed ammo feeds into newly uncovered weapon emplacements. Seriously outfitted heavy infantry — Bloody Axes and Leering Moons — and a chugging walker that looked like a Dreadnought rumbled into the street.
Stowing his thunder hammer, Zerberyn crouched by the truck’s rear bar and took it in both hands, intending to block the way behind them. The ligaments rose up on his neck until his entire upper body shook. He let go with a gasp — the vehicle was immovable.
‘Karva, Reoch,’ he called, the strongest in his command. ‘Aid me, brothers.’
A missile screwed over their heads before either of the Space Marines had moved. The warhead’s on-board guidance spirit jinked it between wrecks and debris, and then slammed it through the flame-effect front fairing of an ork attack bike. An implosive krak detonation ripped out its fuselage, drew fire back in through its exhaust, and sent what was left of the sidecar rocketing spectacularly into the air.
‘Emperor’s speed, brother,’ voxed Sergeant Columba.
Zerberyn saw the green-lit armoured profiles of Tempestus Scions taking position amongst the ribs and angels of the station’s roof. Hot-shot and support weapon fire lashed across the wide road.
‘Many thanks,’ Zerberyn replied.
‘Give them to the major. He will make better use of them.’
‘Can you see Kalkator?’
‘To my shame.’
‘Then cover us until we are clear, then circle back and follow. I will praise you both in person.’
Columba gave a snort and signed off.
The road beyond the barricade was lit with drum fires, stripped-down vehicles of sub-human make abandoned around craters in the road. Greenskin dead exhibiting signs of mass-reactive trauma lay splattered and strewn. Zerberyn wiped chilly red condensate from his helm lenses. Drums of the sort he had seen being loaded onto trains bound for the agri-plexes were piled high in pyramidal stacks outside of warehouses. Where those outbound vessels had appeared empty, a handful of these were leaking a gelatinous paste where bolt-rounds had punctured them but not hit sufficient mass to detonate. Intermingled human skins were staked up under glowing electrical heaters. Tanneries. An acidic urine stench infused them and wafting out into the street with every flap and ripple of slow-curing flesh.