Dark Hunters: Umbra Sumus

TWENTY-TWO

Infractus vallo

All through the night, the retreat went on. The defenders of Ras Hanem abandoned their positions in the south of the city trench by trench, leaving behind many of the wounded who could not walk and had no hope of healing. These unfortunates among the Guard and the militia snapped off a shot now and again to convince the enemy that the lines were still fully manned, and they were also left with a fistful of grenades, to use upon themselves when the end came and the Punishers saw through the charade. Everyone knew now that to be captured alive was worse than any death imaginable.

Fornix supervised the withdrawal from the Armaments District, and Dietrich’s remaining engineers set booby traps linked to piles of munitions all over the manufactoria. The thousands of workers who remained in the district were shepherded north in the last transport convoys of the night, hundreds of them clinging to every edge and angle of the big munitions haulers and ore carriers.

Fornix supervised the loading of the vehicles. The civilians climbed onto the vehicles silently, with only some muffled sobbing. The big haulers could carry two hundred at a time, and they ran all night, bringing thousands north to the citadel through the lines. This would sound like nothing new to the enemy; supply columns had been running endlessly between the Armaments District and the citadel since the start of the fighting.

Of necessity, the sick, the old, and the worst wounded were left behind, and once they understood what was happening, they clustered around such munitions stores which remained, the more responsible among them given detonators by Dietrich’s engineers, so that they might set off the charges when the end came. After all these weeks of living in a kind of endless hell, they seemed to accept their fate with a kind of dulled relief. At least it would be over.

The entrance to the mines was also rigged to blow, this time remotely, and Fornix kept the remote detonator which linked to the charges on his belt. He knew how many people were down there, and what it would mean to touch that button and seal them off in the blackness.

This is the price that war exacts from us, he thought.

He did not mind paying a personal price for victory, or the hope of it, but it turned his stomach to consign all those thousands who were still underground to a horrible death.

A horrible death – but a better fate than they would enjoy at the hands of the Punishers, all the same. He kept that thought in his mind.

An hour before dawn. The convoys had been running all night, and apart from a few skirmishes out to the west, it would seem that the operation was about to pass off almost bloodlessly.

But in that last cold hour before sunrise, the enemy finally seemed to catch wind of what was going on, and in the space of a few minutes they attacked all along the line, a dozen companies of their heavy armoured infantry leading the advance. Finding no resistance, they came on with a will, enraged to find that they had been tricked. Their sudden rush brought them through the deserted Imperial positions all the way up to the walls of the district itself, and there they raged, foiled by the looming defences.

More and more of the enemy were being roused out of their positions all over the west of the city, and being sent forward by their champions in teeming masses. They came on in their thousands, a massive, beetling surge of roaring warriors hell-bent on murder.

On top of the district blast walls, a squad of Haradai began picking them off with their sniper rifles, but it was like throwing pebbles at the sea.

‘Brother Laufey, withdraw from the walls and make your way to my position,’ Fornix ordered over the vox.

‘Acknowledged, brother. They have a Land Raider with them, and they mean to charge the gates with it, I believe.’

The gates were already rigged to blow. The Punisher vehicle would breach them, but it would be the last thing it did.

Fornix strode along the last of the heavy haulers, which were covered with desperate people scrabbling for a handhold. They could hear, now, the attack going on beyond the walls, and they set up a wail which no threat of violence could silence. It was immaterial now anyway.

‘Captain, this is Fornix – the enemy will be within my perimeter in minutes. Sending the last vehicles north to you now.’

‘I hear you, Fornix,’ Kerne’s voice came back. ‘I will meet them outside the citadel with Septus Squad, and some of Dietrich’s armour. We are pulling everything back within the fortress. They’re assaulting on every front with everything they’ve got, and augur tells us they have bombers inbound.’

‘Yes, captain. Estimate our arrival in forty minutes, if we have some luck on our side.’ Then, ‘Get these vehicles moving!’ Fornix bellowed, augmenting the order with his helm’s vox-enhancer. ‘Do not stop for anything or anyone – drivers – spool them up.’

The big engines on the haulers roared, and the lead vehicle set off. People fell from its sides, screaming, and were crushed by the second hauler in the convoy. There could be no halting or slowing down, not now.

Brother Laufey appeared with four other Scout Marines, breathing hard.

‘They’re trying to scale the district walls,’ he said.

‘Stay with me,’ Fornix told him. ‘We are the rearguard, brothers. We must buy some time for the convoy.’

There was a massive explosion, and a towering mushroom of smoke and flame rose up into the air, blotting out the dawn.

‘That will be our friends at the gate,’ Fornix said. He consulted the chrono in his display. ‘Time to move, brothers – the other charges will begin to go off soon.’

He let them go ahead. The air was full of the sound of the Punisher horde, a noise which brought back old memories. The gate was down, and they would be coming through it as soon as the smoke cleared and they had stumbled through the other booby-traps set down there. Fornix lifted the remote detonator from his belt.

‘Forgive me, my Emperor, for I know what it is I do.’

He pressed the button, heard the muffled thunder as the charges went off down at the mine entrance, and saw the second pillar of black smoke boil up into the lightening sky. Three seconds he stood there, watching it, then he tossed the detonator aside and took off in the wake of the Haradai.

The vehicles were powering along some three hundred metres ahead, lurching over the debris on the road, their exhausts vomiting smoke. Every so often they swerved violently to avoid a shell-hole, and more people were flung off them like discarded trash. The drivers never paused or slowed – they were as eager to get to the safety of the citadel as their cargoes were.

Other booming detonations within the manufactoria. Fornix was running out of the northern gate now, leaving the Armaments District behind at last, and behind him it was erupting in a sea of flame. Tons of munitions had been left behind back there, and they were all cooking off as the Punishers poured into the area, setting off scores of booby-traps. Fornix afforded himself a grim smile as he ran along.

Well, you wanted it, he thought. Now you have it.

The rambling, staggered detonations boiled up into a single great pall of smoke which rose above that region of the city, towering into the morning sky and flattening out into a great mushroom of fire-veined darkness. Thousands of the enemy died in that shadow, consumed by the explosions and crushed as the heavily built manufactoria were brought down around them.

It would be a long time before the armour of Titans was ever built on Ras Hanem again, longer still before the mines could ever be reopened and set in use once more. A few minutes of calculated destruction had undone the labour of centuries.

But better that than let the enemy have it intact.

Fornix and the Haradai halted, went to ground and assessed the situation. The convoy still had at least three kilometres to go, and was losing speed, the big vehicles picking their way carefully over the broken ground and shattered roadway. Firefights were sparking into life all along the northern lines as Mortai withdrew, supported by the eldar and a battalion of General Dietrich’s militia. The city was lit up with energy beams and tracer, and the sound of the growing battle was deafening.

‘It’s beginning to look like a hot morning’s work,’ Fornix said.

‘Hotter for some than others,’ Brother Laufey said with a grin, jerking his head at the conflagration which covered the southern sky. Then his eyes narrowed.

‘Enemy in sight, range six hundred metres. Armoured squads. Brothers, pick your targets left to right.’

The Haradai sighted down the long rifles, and began firing single shots one after the other. With his enhanced sight, Fornix could see that every round found a home. The leading Punisher squad was torn apart, and the rest went to ground and began firing wildly. A heavy bolter started up, rippling along their front and kicking up dirt and stone.

‘Move,’ he said. ‘Fire and manoeuvre, brothers. Keep them off balance.’

‘They’re on our right, first sergeant,’ one of the Scout Marines said, consulting an auspex. ‘I make out at least two full companies heading round the flank to the west.’

‘Damn them.’ Fornix glanced back at the convoy, and cursed once more. ‘Incoming aircraft. Take cover, brothers!’

A flight of Doomfires swooped in low out of the sun, chain-guns blazing, churning up a lane of fire below them. They turned in a graceful arc to the north, and then spread out, still firing.

‘Convoy, this is Fornix – pick up speed – you are under air attack,’ Fornix said into the vox. ‘Captain, can you give anti-air cover to the convoy?’

Jonah Kerne’s voice came back. ‘Acknowledged. Commissar Von Arnim, target those aircraft, priority call. I want the roadway protected for as far out as you can range.’

Fainter, Von Arnim answered from the citadel gun-caverns. ‘Anti-air-batteries retargeting now, my lord.’

They saw the bright flashes in the sides of the citadel as the heavy batteries opened out. But the Doomfires were flying nap-of-the-earth. They coursed overhead at less than fifty metres, and strafed the helpless vehicles below. A line of explosions rippled along the roadway, and Fornix saw one of the huge thirty-ton munitions haulers blasted onto its side. Another was set alight but kept driving, and the tiny living torches of its passengers leapt off in their dozens, their screams lost in the cacophony.

As the Doomfires pulled up at the end of their run, the guns of the citadel caught them, a wall of tracer and kinetic fire smashing into the Chaos fighter-bombers and knocking them out of the sky. None of the flight survived.

Fornix watched the sight in grim silence.

‘They’re on the move again,’ Brother Laufey said. ‘Squads feeling round our left now, first sergeant.’

They were in danger of being cut off. Fornix looked about him. The tactical feed in his display was full of red runes. They were even advancing through the burning ruins of the manufactoria, clambering over their own dead and shrieking like animals, firing their bolters into the air and sending blasts of promethium fire into every corner.

‘To the citadel,’ he said to the Space Marines about him. ‘There are altogether too many of these scum around for my liking. Brother Laufey, lead off.’

The Space Marines began running again, while behind them the Punisher thousands advanced over the ruins and the shattered city, and above the Armaments District, the immense smoke-pall rose thousands of metres into the air like some fearsome monument to the dead.

Up near the foot of the citadel, Jonah Kerne was in the front line with Septus Squad under Brother-Sergeant Corvo. On either side of them the eldar were fighting with lithe economy, and the air was full of the unfamiliar shriek of the shurikens. Te Mirah went from one of her warriors to the other, emboldening them, her farsight lighting up new or hidden targets for their weapons.

A blood-drenched squad of Khornate berserkers charged through the withering fire, and for a moment she held out a hand and the power streamed out of her, holding them in place, their feet digging uselessly in the dirt. She skewered one with her rune-bright spear, and her people cut the others down, the tiny shuriken wafers slicing them to dismembered meat and metal.

More leapt forward, bearing heavy power axes, gilt horns adorning their helms. Their armour was scarlet with paint and blood, bright and garish compared to the livery of the other Punishers, and they charged with a snarling savagery that eclipsed even that of their fellow traitors.

Jonah Kerne raised his ancient bolt pistol and carefully shot the first two through their eye-lenses, then shouldered aside a third, its axe fizzing near his head. He plunged the chainsword down into the thing’s neck, felt the blade grind its way through the vertebrae, and the head rolled free.

‘Target left,’ he said curtly to Corvo’s squad, and the Space Marines half-buried in rubble and almost unseen opened up with their bolters in short, savage bursts which tore up the assault. The Khornate fanatics died to the last, the red mania of their fury burning away all thought of retreat. They piled up like a crimson barricade before Corvo’s warriors.

‘Reload,’ Brother-Sergeant Corvo said calmly.

The big munitions haulers had arrived at the gates of the citadel. Out of a convoy of seven, three had survived. One was still burning half a kilometre short of the Dark Hunters position, and the Punishers swept around it in a black, yellow-flecked tide. Thousands were now closing in on the gates of the citadel from all points of the compass, iron filings drawn to the magnet of the Adeptus Astartes and their allies.

Fornix came running up with Laufey’s squad. He met Kerne at that mound of enemy dead and raised his power fist in greeting. His fingers dripped with blood. ‘Quincus and Sextius squads are coming in on the right, captain, and Orsus is bringing Tertius up from the east. We must hold here until they join us.’

‘I hear you, brother.’

Behind Kerne, General Dietrich made his way forward, leading a platoon of his own 387th, their uniforms in rags. A Leman Russ tank was barking out to one side, smoke leaking from battered holes in its armour, and off to the left the command Baneblade of Dietrich’s regiment squatted like an immense armoured toad, belching flame. The general was firing a laspistol and the gauntlet-blades glittered in his other fist. Kerne noted with approval the steadiness of his exhausted men. There was no notion of retreat in their eyes – the Guard was not yet beaten.

‘Fornix,’ Kerne said. ‘Let us see if we can make them pay a toll for this gate.’

Then he bent and opened the leather pouch at his waist, and drew out the company banner. The plasteel staff telescoped out, and the tattered material rose above his head. Mortai’s Cerebrum et Haliaetum rose above the battlefield of Askai for the first time, and as the surrounding Space Marines caught sight of that ancient banner, they sent up a roar.

The Dark Hunters rose out of the filth and rubble, and opened up on the approaching host with a blaze of furious bolter fire. Warriors from Novus Company set up their meltaguns and heavy bolters and flamers and poured streams of death into the oncoming ranks.

Kerne walked ahead of the line, the banner raised high in one fist, and he had to fight the impulse to charge headlong into the enemy, to deal out death with fist and sword, to break the body of the hated foe at close range and feel their life give out under his hands.

His brothers were seized by the same exaltation. They strode forward, still firing, still picking their targets with all the ferocious efficiency of their calling, but it seemed to Jonah Kerne in that moment that if he let them, they would gladly hurl themselves forward into the fray with no thought for tactics. Their blood was up.

Other squads joined them, there before the very gates of the citadel. Kerne saw Sergeant Orsus there, and Sergeant Kagan came up alongside with his squad, then Sergeant Rusei with his. As they assembled under Mortai’s worn banner, so their dogged spirits were uplifted by the wanton killing, the roar of war, the company of their brethren.

For a few minutes, the band of Dark Hunters advanced across the battlefield like tawny, dust-shrouded giants and dealt out such death with such glorious abandon that the carnage seemed almost to take unto itself a strange kind of beauty.

They were Adeptus Astartes, the finest warriors in the known galaxy, and nothing could stand against them.

But the moment passed. The exaltation faded. The Punishers advanced over heaped lines of corpses and kept on coming, bellowing like the beasts they were. And to the rear of the infantry the warped crab-like hulks of half a dozen Chaos Dreadnoughts were coming up. Jonah Kerne collected himself, and looked around.

‘Back, brothers, back to the gates. There are too many – we cannot hold them here.’

They fell back by squad, whilst the eldar and Dietrich’s forces covered their withdrawal. They dragged back with them the bodies of three of their own, and as they reached the gates, Brother Passarion was there, with Reclusiarch Malchai and Elijah Kass. The Apothecary at once went to work on retrieving the gene-seed of his fallen brethren.

‘Malchai,’ Jonah Kerne said. Even over the vox, such was the sound of the fighting that he had to fine-tune his auto-senses before he could hear himself. ‘Is everyone else in?’

‘Everyone who is still alive,’ the Reclusiarch said. ‘You are the last, captain. Commissar von Arnim has defensive fire-zones keyed in all around the gate and the lower defences. Once we are all inside he will signal the barrage to begin.’

‘Very well.’ Then Kerne looked at the Librarian, who was standing as silent as a stone, staring past him.

‘What is it, brother – what do you see?’

The young epistolary had taken off his helm. Where once his eyes had been cobalt blue, now they had darkened into a grey as flat as old iron. He seemed to have to drag his gaze away from the ranks of the enemy.

‘He is here, brother-captain, upon this planet. Not orbiting above any more, but here in the city with us. He has come to oversee the final act of the conflict.’

‘Good,’ Kerne said with savage emphasis. ‘If he is down here with us in the dirt, then we can kill him. Get inside.’

They trooped in through the adamantium gates, the Baneblade taking half a dozen missile strikes as it went past them. It could barely limp into the citadel under its own power. Dietrich and his men stood around it as it halted, belching smoke, and the general patted the massive tank’s side as though it were a trusted horse.

The rest of the squads came in, still firing, errant rounds sparking and scoring their armour. ‘All present, dead and alive, captain!’ Fornix shouted.

Kerne looked up at the banner he held as Fornix joined him. To one side there stood Te Mirah and her eldar, seventy or eighty of them in their green armour. He looked at the eldar farseer, and she nodded in her tall helm.

‘Shut the gates,’ Kerne ordered. ‘Commissar Von Arnim, you may commence firing the heavy guns.’

The adamantium colossi slammed shut, crushing half a dozen of the foremost enemy warriors on the very threshold of the citadel. There was a moment almost of quiet in the wake of that great echoing boom, and then the thundering of the artillery began.