Angel of Fire

The enemy horde raced on, the tanks leaving the infantry behind now except where the footsloggers had scrambled up onto the hulls of the armoured vehicles. They had about them that certainty of victory that keeps men coming even in the face of near inevitable destruction.

Every one of those soldiers over there was convinced that somehow death would pass him by. It might tap the shoulder of his comrades but it would leave him alone. That and rotgut alcohol are the only two things I know that can be relied on to keep men walking forwards in the face of the sort of fire we laid down – those and maybe a stern-faced commissar standing behind them with a bolt pistol and a chainsword in his hand.

I could tell from the panicked chatter over the comm-net that our own forces did not possess such conviction. All of us knew that we were doomed. There simply was no place to run in the face of that oncoming wave of killer tanks and bloodthirsty soldiers. Our gunners fired like madmen, blowing huge holes in the enemy line. There was no way they could miss. There were just too many targets.

Tens of thousands of las-bolts hailed down on our position. Of course, they could do nothing to the Indomitable but it was like trying to peer into an incoming blizzard through the visor of a helmet. The Indomitable shuddered under near impact from incoming shells.

Another of our tanks brewed up. More men I had fought alongside for a decade died in the burning inferno it became. I waited and I waited. I offered up more prayers. I hoped that the lieutenant would say something, anything. I hoped that he had a plan as he so often had in the past. All I can remember is that calm voice saying, ‘Steady lads. Steady!’ The smell of stale sweat and fear filled the cabin. My hands felt clammy on the sticks.

The Shadowswords started to target us with everything they had. At first the beams ploughed through the rubble around us, adding to the chaos of broken brick and plascrete.

Every time they missed I breathed a little easier, but I could tell that the shots were coming closer. They were starting to bracket us, and then it was only a matter of time before they got the range. Their gunners were not as good as ours but they would get there in the end.

I took a deep breath and fought down the urge to throw the Baneblade into reverse and try and get us out of there. Doing so would just get me a bullet in the back of the head.

Anton and Ivan kept firing. They hit one of the Shadowswords and immobilised it. A moment later something else hit it and sent its crew to hell. I heard cheering over the internal comm-net. It was a small victory but our gun crews felt the need to celebrate it.

The next moment the Indomitable shook. We had been hit although I had no idea how badly. I heard the lieutenant bark some questions. He wanted reports from every part of the tank. Most of them came in but there was nothing from the drive rooms.

That was bad. If we lost all of our drives we would have no power. We would be unable to move. In the worst-case scenario, the servomotors on the guns would stop working and crews would need to crank everything by hand.

In quick succession we were hit three more times. It was as if we were inside an anvil and a giant was pounding on us. It was only afterwards, when I had time to think, that I realised that was the case. The shots were so close together and so powerful and the effect was so devastating that I did not have time while it was happening. One of the shots must have hit the tracks because afterwards I saw that they were torn to shreds. I know another hit one of our turrets and killed its entire crew. I was much more concerned by the effects of the third shot. I felt those personally.

The entire command chamber erupted in a blaze of light. The air was filled with the smell of ozone and melting fuse wire. My display went mad for a moment and then dead.

Instinctively I tugged at the sticks but nothing happened so I looked over at the lieutenant, hoping for instructions. It was then that I saw the great gaping hole in the internal bulkhead where something had torn through it.

I saw also that the lieutenant was not going to be giving me any orders ever again. Whatever had smashed through durasteel had not been slowed down in the slightest by his mere flesh.

All that was left of the lieutenant was a torn corpse, a mess of entrails strewn across his commander’s chair. His head lay where it had rolled on the far side of the cabin. Some quirk of fate had spared the Understudy. He stood there, horror-stricken, blood splattered on his beautiful uniform and on his face. His eyes were wide. His mouth was open. He seemed to be screaming and groaning at the same time.

I don’t suppose he had expected to take over command of the Baneblade under quite these circumstances.

I listened on the comm-net but it was dead. I looked around to see if anybody was capable of giving orders. In my heart of hearts, I knew there wasn’t but, such was the ingrained habit of looking to command for instructions, that I could not stop myself.

I unstrapped myself from my chair and tried to stand up but my legs would not respond to my brain’s instructions. I looked down, half-fearing to see that they had been blown off but they were still there. They just refused to move.

I looked over at the New Boy. He was shaking his head as if he did not quite understand what had happened. He was feeling at the back of his skull, touching the dark stain there.

At first I thought that he had been hit, that his head had been broken open and something was leaking out. It took me a moment to realise that he was okay. It was simply that a chunk of meat had been thrown across the room as the lieutenant’s body had been torn apart and had landed on him. It was mixed with blood and hair but he had not taken a scratch. I think he came to that conclusion at roughly the same time as I did.

I put my hands on the dashboard and pushed, raising myself up out of my seat. My legs decided to work again and I managed to stand upright, swaying dizzily. I staggered over to the Understudy and began to shake him. There was an odd madness in his eyes and he was still making that strange sound.

I don’t think he was entirely there. I think his spirit had gone somewhere else for the duration. I slapped him on the cheek. It did not bring him out of it. I would have thought if anything could have, that would. The upper classes on Belial were not used to being struck by their social inferiors.

He just kept staring at me and staring at me. I looked over at New Boy. He seemed to be waiting for instructions and it came to me that right at this moment in time, I was in charge.

Warning lights strobed redly through the inside of the tank. Alarm horns sounded. I unslung my shotgun and strode over to the breach in the hull. I looked out and saw that we were surrounded by the enemy. They just seemed to be there, as if somehow they had crossed the distance between us and where they had been instantly.

I realised then that some time had passed since we were hit and I simply had not grasped that fact. Such things often happen in the chaos of combat. You never get used to them. I smelled burning and I saw black smoke rising above the hull of the Baneblade. I noticed that the escape hatches near number one turret were open and Anton and Ivan had clambered out along with one of their loaders. I could not tell who in the gloom.

Such is the size of a Baneblade that I was actually a long way above the ground with a clear view of the enemy soldiers below us and the enemy Shadowswords passing close by.

They were just as huge and much more menacing. Perhaps for the first time in my life I truly realised exactly how terrifying a main battle tank can be as it passes. You feel completely insignificant compared to that vast monstrosity and you just know that with the slightest sweep of its smallest weapon it could extinguish your life like an officer treading on the stub of a lho stick.

Even as I watched, a small anti-personnel turret on the side of the Shadowsword began to rotate. I shouted a warning to Ivan and Anton and pulled my head back inside the gaping hole in the Indomitable’s side. Bolter shells bounced off the iron walls outside. Some of them passed through the gaping hole in the hull. Something ricocheted around the interior of the command chamber and I dived for cover instinctively.

When I heard voices outside speaking the guttural accent of Irongrad I knew the enemy soldiers had started clambering up the hull of our Baneblade. The anti-personnel fire had stopped. More time had passed without me realising it. I think I was in shock.

I could hear the enemy coming closer and closer. I turned and saw that New Boy was standing beside the Understudy, trying to get him to say something, but nothing was happening. I turned and shouted at them, ‘Get into cover! Now! Get out of here!’

He looked at me as if he did not quite understand what I was saying. I brought my combat shotgun around and he flinched as anyone will when a weapon is pointed at them by someone of whose intentions he is not sure. ‘Go!’

At that moment, a soldier in brownish-red uniform clambered through the hole in the metal wall. He saw me at once and began to swing his lasgun towards me. I turned and fired. The shotgun spoke in a voice of thunder. The kick of the weapon almost dislocated my shoulder.

The heretic screamed and fell backwards, tumbling to the ground far below, carried back out through the hull-breach by the force of the shotgun blast. His blood stained the floor. More heads poked through the gap. I pumped the shotgun and fired again then I dived behind what was left of the command throne, almost slipping on the lieutenant’s slimy remains.

The knees of my trousers were sticky. My hands were red too. I did not really have time to consider the implications of this. The New Boy had taken the Understudy and disappeared through the internal hatch.

Smoke billowed along the corridor and through it and for the first time I wondered if I had done the right thing ordering him to run. In the depths of the Baneblade fires were raging and smoke can be as deadly as poison gas under the wrong circumstances. I told myself that he had his rebreather and that he knew how to use it but I was not entirely certain that under the circumstances he would remember to do so.

Even as that thought occurred to me, I realised that I had not adjusted my own mask. I pulled the rebreather into position and immediately it flattened out the stink of torn-apart bodies and burned control systems.

I adjusted my goggles and squinted at the door again, half-wishing and half-dreading that the heretics would appear again. A kind of madness descended upon me, filling me with bloodlust. It’s not that I lost all fear – it was more that I knew that death would put an end to the terror clawing at my gut and so I feared it less.

I waited and I waited and no one came.

I heard footsteps clattering in the corridor behind me and I turned, half-expecting to see the New Boy again but it was Ivan and Anton. They were dragging the loader along with them. He was pale and had lost a lot of blood and it seemed obvious that he had been hit by a bolter shell. With both hands he was holding his stomach and I could see the pink squirming thing that was one of his intestines trying to escape from between his fingers. Even as I watched, he coughed and what seemed like a river of blood gushed from his mouth. He slumped to the floor, clearly dead.

Ivan and Anton held their lasguns at the ready. They looked just as prepared to shoot me as I was prepared to shoot them at the moment.

‘It’s Leo,’ Ivan said, ‘don’t shoot!’

‘That would be nice,’ I said idiotically. ‘If you don’t shoot me, I won’t shoot you.’

‘Excellent plan,’ said Ivan.

‘I do my best,’ I said.

‘Is that the...’ asked Anton. I nodded.

‘It’s the lieutenant.’

‘He deserved better,’ said Ivan.

‘We all do,’ I said. ‘But I doubt we’ll get it.’

‘I thought I saw some of the heretics climbing the side of the tank,’ Ivan said.

‘You did,’ I said. I patted the barrel of my shotgun. ‘My friend here discouraged them from entering uninvited.’

‘It’s good to have a friend like that,’ said Ivan.

‘Cover me,’ I said. ‘I’m going to take a look around.’

I took a couple of steps and threw myself flat where there was less blood and then I wriggled forwards on my belly towards the hole in the hull wall. When I got there I looked out and surveyed the battlefield. The man I had shot lay on the ground below me. Another had been run over by a tank. You could tell by the tread marks on his belly. What was left of our Baneblade was a metal island rising out of a sea of heretics.

We were on our own, I realised, surrounded by our enemies. I did not see any way we were going to get out of this.

All around us I could see the heretics. There were hundreds of tanks and tens of thousands of soldiers surging past. Most of them paid not the slightest attention to the broken-down Baneblade in their midst. They were too busy concentrating on the factorum zones ahead. They had their eyes on the objective they had been sent to retake.

I felt utterly insignificant. It did not seem as if I was even worth killing.

I noticed in the ranks of the enemy there were many priests with halos of flame. They seemed to take the same position in the heretic’s army as commissars held in our own. I saw them exhorting the soldiers and threatening them and when one of them looked up at me I got back out of sight certain that the worst thing I could do would be to attract the attention of such a fanatic.

Anton and Ivan threw themselves down next to me and peeked out over the edge of the breach in the hull.

‘Bloody hell,’ said Anton. ‘It’s like there’s an army down there.’

He grinned a cheesy grin and unclipped a grenade and dropped it over the side of the tank. It fell amid the heretics and exploded, killing a dozen of them. The unbelievers looked around, unable to understand what had happened. Perhaps they thought they were under artillery fire. Perhaps they thought that some distant tank was shooting at them. I could cheerfully have just lain there and let the heretics pass by but the two madmen I was with were not prepared to do that.

Ivan grunted and threw a grenade of his own. He tossed it further and it landed beside a Leman Russ. The explosion ricocheted off the side of the tank, leaving it unscathed, but killing more heretics. Ivan laughed and Anton giggled and I cursed the pair of them for being idiots.

They did not care. I think they had already decided that they were dead and they were just going to take as many of the heretics with them as they could. It had all become a big childish game to them. I did not know whether to laugh or cry.

At that moment, all I really wanted to do was keep living for another few heartbeats. I looked up at the sky. For once there was a hole in the clouds above us and I could see a patch of pure reddish-blue. The sun was shining through it and briefly I saw the contrail of some aircraft passing at high altitude. It was an incongruously peaceful sight in the midst of that vast assault.

Anton threw another grenade. Then Ivan did the same. They kept doing it and they kept laughing and there was something contagious about their mad mirth in the middle of all that death so I joined in.

Of course, it was only a matter of time before the heretics realised what was happening. Someone in the turret of a passing Leman Russ tank noticed us and turned the heavy bolter on us. We barely had time to duck back out of sight. Sparks flashed off the edge of the hull. Then I heard shouts below us and I knew that the enemy were starting to clamber up the side of the Baneblade again.

‘Now you’ve done it,’ I said. I sounded just like my father at that moment. The pair of idiots had known my old man and they flinched at my tone. My father had been a famously violent man in his day and some of that came out in me sometimes.

We scuttled away across the command chamber, jumping over the loader’s corpse, trying to find some cover from the attack that we knew was incoming. There was no place to hide in the corridor and the smell of burning was becoming more intense. We scuttled back along the way Anton and Ivan had come and clambered up the metal ladder, making our way to the top of the Baneblade.

I’m not exactly sure why we did it. There was no escape. The heretics would eventually catch us. Perhaps it was pure instinct, trying to keep ourselves alive for just that little bit longer. Or perhaps it was simply part of the childish game that Ivan and Anton were playing, sort of like hide and seek, forcing the enemy to come and find us, wasting their time as much as possible. It was probably some mixture of the two.

Eventually we clambered up through the topside hatch and emerged on the roof of the Baneblade. We were a long way above ground, out of the arc of fire of the heretics. There was plenty of cover along the top of the tank.

‘We can drop grenades on them when they try and climb up,’ said Anton. He smiled again and there was madness in his smile. He was like a child being too clever. On the other hand, I could not think of anything else to do.

‘And then what?’ I asked. Anton shrugged.

‘And then we die,’ Ivan said.

‘At least we’ll take a few of them with us,’ Anton said. ‘And that’s all a soldier of the Emperor can ask for!’

He had read too many prop-novs. Still, I could not fault his logic. I heard voices below us. I smelled smoke. Looking out from the top of the tank, all I could see was enemies as far as the horizon.

It was like standing on top of a huge durasteel cliff looking down on a sea of hostile flesh. I took a deep breath, offered up another prayer to the Emperor, checked my shotgun and, for a mad moment, considered throwing myself off the edge of the tank with a live grenade in each hand. After all, what did it matter whether I did that now or got fried by lasgun fire in a few minutes? The desire to live for those few extra minutes stopped me but it was touch and go.

Ivan looked at us both. He scanned from face to face. There was no expression on his ruined metal features but I thought there was a certain sadness in his glance. ‘Well then, I guess this is it. You’re a pair of sad bastards but I’m glad to have known you.’

Anton gave him a salute and then looked up and squinted at something in the sky. ‘What the hell is that?’ He asked.

I followed Anton’s gaze. Hundreds of objects dropped out of the sky. I was not exactly sure what they were. They did not seem connected in any way to what was going on round about us. I noticed something else. In the distance, behind us, absolutely monstrous figures were striding out from behind the skyscraper towers that our forces still held.

‘What in the name of the Emperor?’ Ivan said. There was awe in his voice.

‘Are those what I think they are?’ Anton asked.

‘I’m pretty sure they are,’ I said. They were like animated statues, perhaps a hundred times the height of a man, made of dura-steel and ancient alloys. They moved with a massive, lumbering grace. They were ancient god-machines produced by the Adeptus Titanicus, perhaps the most powerful war engines ever built and I wondered where they had come from. It was only then that the size and power of the force that Macharius had assembled really began to sink in. And that was not all; the things dropping out of the sky began to hit the ground all around us and what was in them broke out in a whirlwind of violence.

They were drop-pods and within them were Space Marines of the Death Spectres Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes. They were massive, armoured men, moving almost too fast for the eye to see. They smashed their way through the oncoming heretics and it did not matter that they were facing tanks and were outnumbered perhaps ten thousand to one. Where they struck, their enemies died. Bolters coughed in their hands and blasted holes in heretics. Chainswords decapitated enemies two or three at a time.

We did not have long to watch the violence. Our own enemies were coming closer from below.

‘It was all a trap,’ I said, thinking out loud. Ivan saw it at once. Anton, as ever was a bit slower.

‘They left this part of the line weak,’ Ivan said. ‘They knew the heretics would attack here in force.’

It was easy enough to understand and even quite admirable if you did not happen to be the bait in the trap. A massive enemy force had been drawn into the counter-attack. It overextended itself as it came on, certain of victory. It punched a salient out of our line and then once it was entrapped, it was encircled on both flanks by our armour and the Space Marines dropped on it from above. I worked it all out as I stood there. It was typical of Macharius or those who had studied his methods like Sejanus. There were feints within feints, traps within traps. We had walked into what looked like a trap ourselves only to draw our enemies into a bigger one. Maybe Macharius had not been quite so open with us as I had thought back when he was giving his speech from the side of the Indomitable.

Suddenly Anton shouted, ‘Look out!’

A grenade arced up through the open hatch and we dived for cover. I scrambled into place behind an anti-personnel turret and heard shrapnel ping off the metal. When I looked up I could see heretics scrambling out of the hatch. One was already up. Another had just popped his head out. I blasted with the shotgun. I took the top heretic’s leg off at the knee and put multiple holes in his friend’s head. Ivan and Anton’s lasgun made sure of them.

‘Shit,’ I heard Anton say and looking up I saw why. While we had been busy at this hatch more of the enemy had emerged from the other topside hatches. We shared the roof of the Baneblade with at least a dozen heretics, and more and more were emerging all the time. Our situation had gone from bad to worse.

I hunkered down behind my cover and pumped the shotgun. Anton lay flat behind a small raised seam of metal. Ivan raced across the duralloy, las-bolts burning at his heels, and dropped into place beside me.

‘They’ve fallen into our trap,’ he said. His voice was flat because of his metal jaw-work and his metal-plated face had no expression but there was a grim humour in the set of his eyes.

‘Yeah, we’ve got them where we want them now.’

A grenade dropped into place between his feet. Without the slightest hesitation, he picked it up and lobbed it back. It must have been at the end of its timer because it burst while it was still in the air.

Heretics screamed.

I popped up and blasted with the shotgun. The enemy were closer than I had expected. At that range it was impossible for me to miss. The leader went down, his chest a bloody ruin.

A grenade landed among them. Half a dozen of them were caught in the blast. The nearest ones fell clutching ruined faces and chests. One or two had been shielded by their comrades’ bodies. They kept coming. In one glance I took in the sheer number of heretics. There were just too many of them to be overcome.

And then it happened.

Something big landed on the hull of the Baneblade. It was huge and not unlike an egg and it crushed half a dozen heretics beneath its weight. Even as it began to slide off the hull, its sides burst open like one of those magical mechanical toys shops used to sell when I was a child. Massive armoured men erupted out of it. They moved much too fast for me to follow them. Bolters fired, weapons far larger than any mortal man ought to be able to carry. Where the shells hit, and they always hit, the target seemed simply to explode in a welter of blood and bone and flesh. Chainswords swung. The great egg fell off the Baneblade but I know for a fact that none of the men who had ridden it down from orbit were still in it. They were all with us on the Baneblade.

The remaining heretics looked just as astonished as we were for a few seconds. Those seconds were all they had left of life. The armoured figures smashed into them. One of them was lifted by the throat one-handed by one of the armoured giants and simply tossed away, dropping from the side of the Baneblade legs flailing. When he hit the ground below, he exploded, skull shattering, body reduced to shambles. Somehow, without me seeing it, the newcomer had slammed a grenade into his mouth before he fell. It was an action guaranteed to inspire terror in the heretics witnessing it and that was the intention.

When I looked back, the whole area around the newcomers was clear. Bodies were piled at their feet, limbless, headless, broken-backed and broken-boned. One man howled wordlessly as he flopped, his spine shattered. One of those massive armoured boots descended on his head, turning it to jelly.

Anton just stood there with his mouth open as if he was trying to catch flies in it. Ivan tilted his head to one side and studied them. I did the same, not exactly sure that what I was seeing was real.

They were big men, bigger than me by a long way, and their ceramite armour made them look bigger still. It was painted glossy black. White skull patterns were painted on their helmets. A similar pattern was emblazoned in white warpaint on the black face of the giant warrior facing us. I flinched for a moment as he raised his boltgun and fired. The shot passed between my legs and I heard a groan. I turned and looked and saw the heretic who had been sneaking up on me. How the Space Marine had known he was there in the chaos and having just sprung out of the drop-pod I will never know. How they had avoided killing us in the opening few seconds of the carnage I will never know either. If it had been me, I would just have shot everything in sight, but somehow in the heartbeat between evacuating the damaged drop-pod and entering the fire-fight, they had managed to tell friend from foe and killed every enemy, and spared our lives.

‘Thanks,’ I said stupidly.

The Death Spectre grunted what might have been an acknowledgment and then leapt off the side of the Baneblade, plunging into the heretics below. If I had tried that I would have broken both legs. He landed, weapons firing, and blazed a bloody path towards the priest with the burning head. When I looked back, all of those other massive armoured figures were gone, the only evidence they had been there being the piles of the dead.

‘It’s a bloody miracle,’ I muttered.

‘Space Marines,’ Anton said.

‘Macharius must have sent them to get you, Anton,’ said Ivan. Somehow, in the face of the awful reality, the joke fell flat.

The Death Spectres fanned out from their drop point, killing the psykers it turned out were concentrated all around us. Tanks did not slow the Space Marines down. They clambered up on to them, ripped off durasteel hatches as if they were made of paper and dropped grenades into the interior.

Sometimes they dropped in afterwards themselves and there would be sounds of awful violence and moments later a Death Spectre would emerge covered in gore. It was terrifying to watch. I have made war alongside hardened veterans, done more than my share of killing. I have fought orks and daemon-worshippers and monstrous xenos things and I would rather face any ten of those again than one soldier of the Adeptus Astartes.

They moved with a terrible combination of efficiency and ferocity that was oddly graceful. I saw a heretic sniper taking a bead on one of them from the top of a burned-out tank. He was too far away for my shotgun to hit. I shouted a warning but I was certain it could not be heard through the roar of battle. Just as it seemed he was about to be shot, the Space Marine raised his gun in a casual motion and blew the top of the heretic’s head away. From the position in which he was standing you would have sworn he could not have seen his target take aim and he did not even seem to look in his direction, merely pointed his bolter and fired then returned to killing the heretics closer to him. The shot was uncannily accurate for the range.

An enormous shadow fell on our position. The gigantic humanoid shape of a Warlord Titan loomed over us. I looked up, an insect confronting an angry god. The Warlord’s monstrous head scanned from side to side like a predator looking for prey. I sensed the ancient, terrible spirit within it. This was not some inanimate unthinking engine. It was a living thing, bred to war, intended to kill, and full of dreadful fury. Just the sight of it made me want to throw myself back into the wreckage and hide.

Massive pistons hissed in the Titan’s limbs as it moved. The god-machine’s huge Volcano Cannon swung around. The rush of the air it displaced ruffled my hair. The vibrations of the metal giant’s stride passed from the earth through the shattered hull and echoed through my body. My skin tingled from the halo effect of its void shields.

The Titan fired.

The smell of ozone and alchemicals filled the air. The high-pitched whine of the weapon’s capacitors hurt my ears. I ground my teeth in pain. A heretic Shadowsword went up in flames. There is ancient hatred between the god-machines and those tanks. It is said that the Shadowswords were built to kill Titans and the Titans return the favour any chance they get.

Ivan braced himself on a maintenance node in the shattered fuselage, pulled out his magnoculars and studied the destroyed vehicle, a thin line of drool dribbling down the rusted metal of his prosthetic jaw.

‘See anything interesting?’ Anton asked.

‘There’s an idiot standing beside me,’ Ivan said.

‘It’s not nice to talk about Leo that way,’ Anton said. ‘Best be quiet or he’ll hear you and he has a shotgun.’

That’s the way I like to remember them, chattering like loons while all around us what felt like the end of the world raged.