‘A grand battle!’ Skyclaw shouted. ‘Son of Guilliman, you have led us to a rare feast!’
‘We will avenge the dead of Ullanor yet,’ said Eligos.
‘By the will of the Emperor,’ Iairos said. Yet he felt the pressure of passing time. The gate was dark, and the orks’ attention was divided by the simultaneous attacks on three fronts. The squads were benefiting, Iairos thought, from the uncertainty over which target was the most important, the most vulnerable. The orks were fighting blindly, for the moment without the direction that had made them so lethal on Ullanor. But the confusion would pass, and they were still mustering ever greater numbers of reinforcements. Greenskins poured out of every tunnel entrance. They converged on Crozius at a run. They died on the near approach.
For now.
Iairos calculated his team was at the edge of what it could hold off. And once Gadreel’s task was complete, they would be facing a much greater flood of the enemy.
‘Done,’ said Gadreel. ‘Let us bear witness now to the will of the Omnissiah.’
‘Thane,’ Iairos voxed. ‘Let the current flow.’
The orks were concentrating their fire now. With Sword no longer moving, the attacks were becoming more and more focused and savage. Desperate too, Koorland wanted to believe. He wanted the orks to know doom was rushing for them. He wanted them to know fear. He wanted them to know fate had turned its back on them at last.
Simmias had cut through a slab of the generator’s shielding. While he spliced the teleport homer into the inner workings of the machine, Koorland, Vepar and Haas held the ground attacks off. Icegrip had climbed up to the cable network. The lines were thick enough to walk on, and he raced over the network, taking down the ork gunners. Xenos blood rained on the cavern floor. Bodies hailed down upon their kin. Hanniel’s warp lighting lashed out again and again, burning more of the greenskins above.
And still the enemy fire became more and more focused. Solid rounds pounded against Koorland’s armour. Some of the rounds were large enough, the hits direct enough, to punch through the ceramite. He blinked off the damage warnings. There was no shelter, and nowhere to go until the task was done.
Haas’ armour was shattered over her chest and shoulders, though she still had her helmet. She kept moving, dodging from one end of the squad’s position to the other. Her shouts had become a raspy snarl. Her breath was pained. Her shots counted, though. She fought with the purpose of a warrior certain of her death, and as certain that she would take the enemy down with her.
‘Now!’ Simmias shouted.
‘Now!’ Koorland repeated into the vox. ‘Thane! It must be now!’
‘Turn the power back on!’ Thane voxed to Abathar. The roar of the attacking orks was too great for him to make himself heard otherwise. He did not look back. Standing above Forcas, Straton and Warfist, he sprayed bolter shells down the ramp into the rising tide. The four Space Marines killed the greenskins by the score, but the tide still grew. The orks charged over heaps of bodies. There were thousands of them massing at the base of the ramp, the press of the mob pushing them on. Their horde was so dense, it pushed even the dead forward.
There would be no retreat through the tunnels.
Squad Gladius slowed the orks. Each second was a victory, Thane thought. Each second might be the victory.
The orks did not engage in massed fire, wary of destroying the centre they had come to save. If they had, Gladius would have already lost.
There was a huge flash behind Thane. For a moment, the ramp and its combatants were lit in negative colours.
‘Power restored,’ Abathar reported. ‘The devices are charging.’
The gate burst into life. A foul, captive star blazed in the grip of the horn. It vanished, and an emerald explosion on the platform released a mob of heavily armoured orks and a tank into the cavern. The tank had a massive, spiked siege blade. It thundered off the platform in a cloud of black promethium smoke. Its hulking silhouette bristled with guns. Iairos saw it barrel across the cavern floor and knew the mission’s strategy had become desperate.
‘If they start using heavy armour…’ said Vehuel.
‘They may be willing to sacrifice what we have seized,’ Iairos finished.
The tank’s blade struck the wall of bodies. The rampart was taller than a Space Marine now. It toppled forward, a carrion wave. Skyclaw turned towards the vehicle. The storm gathered around him. It surrounded him with a gleaming, whistling shroud of razor ice. He shot his arms forward and the storm screamed with all its concentrated strength into the tank. Ice slashed through every gap in the armour, tore the plating, and shredded the crew. The tank swerved, out of control, but its turrets still barked. A shell slammed into Skyclaw. It hurled him from the remains of the corpse wall. He hit the cavern floor with such force he cracked stone. The storm died.
The Space Wolf’s icon blinked an ominous amber in Iairos’ helm display.
The tank was still moving. Iairos ran forward, his bolter on full auto-bursts. He held the gun in one hand, and with the other he unclipped a frag grenade. He jumped up the fallen wall, hurling the grenade through a rent in the armour. The cab of the vehicle exploded. Torn bodies flew out of it. The tank rode over the wall and then stopped, a new obstacle.
The gate flashed again. More orks appeared. And more tanks.
A snarl erupted from a vox-caster. It was a sound that began as something vaguely human, rising until it became a monstrous shriek of hunger. It was nothing but need, a drive that was beyond human, beyond animal. At first Iairos thought he was hearing the wolf howl of Skyclaw. But the Space Wolf had not moved.
The sound came from Eligos.
The Blood Angel had left his position to the right of Gadreel. He tore over the ground towards the nearest group of orks. They were racing to finish off Skyclaw, who had risen to his knees. Eligos pounded past the Space Wolf, chainsword drawn, and plunged into the orks, blade roaring. He did not fight as he had before. Gone was the elegant exactitude of his violence. He was worse than a butcher. His blows were savage, careless, lethal. The roaring from the vox-caster cut off as he shed his helmet. His face was contorted. It was a rictus, his teeth bared as if they would devour hunger itself.
Eligos was not rescuing Skyclaw. But his whirlwind of violence blunted the orks’ attack long enough for Skyclaw to regain his feet, lift his bolt pistol and shoot back. Iairos and Gadreel rushed to his position. Vehuel moved in more slowly, maintaining a wide field of fire, cutting back at the advance of the horde for another second, and another second.
Iairos stood at Skyclaw’s side, blasting at the enemy. Gadreel ran to Eligos. The Techmarine called to his brother, shouting his name over and over. Eligos did not respond. He tore the orks apart. The tide closed in on all of them, a constriction of foul smell, brutal muscle, drooling fangs and misshapen blades. A vibrating chainaxe cut into Iairos’ flank. He spun into the hit, firing as he turned. The stream of mass-reactive shells pulped the features of his attacker and the orks on either side.
Gadreel blinded one ork after another with his plasma cutter. He called and called his brother’s name in vain. Iairos did not understand the nature of the frenzy that had taken Eligos, but at this stage he almost welcomed it. The Blood Angel fought with such reckless fury he was forcing another small pause on the ork advance.
Iairos stood back to back with Skyclaw, a wall of huge, green brutishness before him. The Rune Priest’s breathing on the vox was ragged. The readout of his life signs was still flashing amber.