Dark Apostle

Las-fire erupted as the other Guardsmen arrived, lending the storm troopers additional weight of fire. There was a roar of daemonic fury, and Boerl saw a Guardsman lifted five metres into the air by a pair of immense, mechanical claws before being ripped in half and hurled into the darkness. His eyes widened as he took in the mass of the hellish thing.

It was a massive, eight-legged machine. No, not truly a machine, he realised with horror as he saw the fleshy torso that erupted from the body of the beast. Four times the size of a man, its black skin covered in glowing, blasphemous runes, the beast seemed to blend into the armoured machine that dwarfed it. The metal plates on the infernal thing rippled like muscle, and blood hissed from wounds scored on its armoured hide.

It stepped forwards, its eight metal limbs ripping free from chains that bound it to rune-encrusted stone blocks. Black-clad figures recoiled from the thing, and several of them were instantly killed as it impaled their bodies on spiked claws that unfolded from its legs. Flames belched from its weapon units, engulfing a group of Guardsmen who screamed in agony as the flesh dissolved from their bones.

'Langer!' roared Boerl. 'Take that thing out!'

The Guardsman at his side blasted another searing beam of death with his meltagun and nodded to his colonel.

'Storm troopers, with me!' shouted Boerl, and with Langer at his side, he charged towards the towering daemonic war engine, blasting at Chaos Marines that moved to intercept them. Several of the storm troopers were hacked to the ground by sweeping blows from the massive warriors, and others were torn to shreds by bolter fire. Langer ducked beneath a swipe from a Chaos Space Marine's barbed, short blade, and Boerl carved his power sword through the warrior's leg as he barrelled past, neatly severing the limb at the thigh. Still the warrior did not drop its weapons, despite the horrendous wound, and it fired as it fell, bolt-rounds thudding into die storm trooper beside Boerl, exploding his chest.

A shot smacked into Langer's leg and he screamed in pain as he fell, his leg shattered. A power armoured foot slammed down onto his neck, silencing him instantly, and another running storm trooper was felled by the Chaos Marine's swinging forearm, his neck cracking audibly. Boerl stumbled, a fortunate accident that saved his life as self-propelled bolts screamed just over his head. He fell to his knees before the monster, and a burst of lasgun fire smashed it backwards. Boerl rose from the ground, impaling the Chaos Marine through the neck with his humming blade. The stink of the monster was staggering, and he gagged as he ripped the power sword free.

Dropping his hellpistol and sheathing his blade, Boerl swept up the meltagun from Langer's lifeless hands and scrambled to his feet, continuing his advance towards the towering war machine that was killing his men in droves.

Its back was to him. He raised the powerful weapon, aiming towards the beast's horned head. Wires sprouted from the back of its blasphemous cranium. He squeezed the trigger. The searing, white-hot beam of super-heated energy screamed towards the target, but as if alerted by some daemonic prescience, the creature merely swung its head to one side and the blast passed harmlessly by.

An explosion detonated behind Colonel Boerl and he was thrown through the air, arms and legs flailing. He crashed to the wet ground, still clutching the melta gun, and grazed one of the war engine's spider-like legs. Pain ripped through him as his shoulder was sliced open by the sharp blades positioned on the daemonic machine's leg. Oblivious to him, it took another step, and Boerl found himself directly beneath the massive thing, lying flat on his back as hissing blood-oil dripped down upon him.

Without hesitation he swung the meltagun and shouted wordlessly as he fired it straight into the underbelly of the mechanical beast. The searing beam tore up through the creature, and a splash of hot liquid washed over the colonel, burning his skin and hissing on his armour.

The daemon engine roared horribly and its legs began to buckle. Scrambling frantically, Boerl pushed himself from beneath the monster before it fell. With the roaring, sucking sound of air filling a vacuum, the daemon essence of the machine vacated its host, and Boerl felt himself reel, his head spinning. A blast of energy knocked him from his feet, and all the Guardsmen within a radius of twenty metres of the departing daemon spirit were thrown to the ground. The Chaos Space Marines were buffeted, but retained their feet, and they fired into the prone Elysians, executing them mercilessly with head shots.

Colonel Boerl was spared this fate as a platoon of Elysians swept into the area, las-fire pounding into the Chaos Marines. It took dozens of shots before any of the traitors fell, and they exacted a heavy toll on the Guardsmen, killing more than ten for each one of their own that succumbed to the weight of fire.

'Facing heavy resistance,' came Captain Laron's voice through Boerl's micro-bead. The captain had led one of the other assaults, targeting an area some five kilometres away.

'No shit,' he muttered as he picked himself up from the ground, retrieving a lasgun from a fallen Elysian and firing it into the Chaos Space Marines.

Burias rose from his position and moved swiftly across the rocky ground, running low and fast. He covered the open ground quickly and dropped behind a group of boulders.

Pausing for a moment, he looked out through the darkness that was as clear as day to his eyes. Rain and wind whipped at him, but he didn't care. The other members of his team were all but invisible, even to his eyes, as they moved through the night. They were spread wide and were closing on their prey swiftly. They had fanned out in a wide arc, heading away from the enemy, racing through ravines and massive cracks in the mountainous terrain before swinging back around to encircle the foe.

This was the kind of warfare that Burias lived for, and he excelled at it. He had built a fierce reputation amongst the Host for his hunting and stealth missions, and the Coryphaus would often utilise his particular talents to sow terror and throw the enemy into disarray while the warlord led the main attacking force into the heart of the enemy's battle force.

Burias scrambled on all fours over the rain-slick boulders and ran into a tight ravine that rose up on either side. Water was flowing down through the ravine. He moved swiftly and quietly despite the bulk of his power armour, leaping lightly from rock to rock and stepping easily over cracks that dropped hundreds of metres beneath him.

The walls of the ravine dropped away in front of him suddenly, exposing a massive drop, and without hesitation Burias leapt, clearing the five metre expanse with ease, landing smoothly and continuing his kilometre-eating pace. His mental map of the area told him that they were close. He heard the heavy thump of mortars and picked up his pace, snarling.

He scrambled up a steep, near vertical, rain-slick incline without pause and leapt from the top to a nearby boulder, and from there to another. Up and down the broken, steep ground he traversed, leaping and rolling, always in motion. The mortars thumped again, closer this time, and he leapt onto a steep wall of rock, pulling himself swiftly up. The cliff-face angled beyond vertical, a dangerous overhang with a drop of hundreds of metres. With a snarl, he kicked off the rock face, lunging for a handhold near the lip of the rock. He grabbed it one-handed and hung there for a moment before he secured another handhold and hauled himself over the edge.

Burias paused, crouching for a moment, scenting the air. The rain dulled his senses somewhat, but the taste of meat in the air was strong. Then he was moving again, running along a thin ridge of rock barely two hand spans wide. The drop on one side must have been almost a thousands metres, but he traversed it at a full run before dropping behind some boulders. Glancing down, he grinned and looked back the way he had come, seeing the dark shapes of several of his brethren racing swiftly across the rocks. The thud of mortars was right beneath him.

He leapt from his position out over the drop, landing on a ledge on the other side. He waited for a few breaths, and then launched himself over the edge. He landed behind some large rocks and waited for the heavy weapons to fire once more. As they did, he rose from his position and ghosted up behind the Guardsmen, who were still oblivious to their imminent demise and were quickly reloading the six powerful mortars set on the rocky ground.

Grabbing the first Guardsman from behind by his helmeted head, Burias pulled him violently backwards, ramming his massive knifeblade into the base of his neck. The blade, easily the length of a man's forearm, severed the spinal cord and continued up into the brain. Burias hurled him away.

The other Guardsmen gaped in horror at the red-clad devil in their midst, even as Burias leapt amongst them. He ripped his blade across the throat of one and plunged it into the neck of another with the return, backhand motion.

Another Word Bearer loomed up behind the group, and a further Guardsman died as a bony, bladed arm was rammed into his back. The daemon within that warrior-brother had already surged to the fore, Burias saw, as the possessed Word Bearer ripped the fallen Guardsman's throat out with a tusk-filled, gaping wide maw.

Feeling Drak'shal begin to surface as the daemon responded to the presence of its kin, a jolt of daemonic power and adrenaline shot through Burias's body. He snarled and leapt at the remaining Guardsmen, who had recovered themselves enough to have drawn laspistols, at least those that were not already scrabbling over rocks in a vain attempt to escape.

Las-fire streaked past Burias's head, singeing the skin, and he grabbed the offender's hand, crushing bones as he turned the pistol away from him. Pulling sharply forwards, he ripped the man's shoulder from its socket and drove his blade up into the man's stomach, twisting it mercilessly.

A blast of las-fire struck him from behind and Burias turned, hurling the body of the man he had just gutted into the shooter. The power of the daemon within rose screaming to the surface and Burias-Drak'shal leapt on the man as he tried to rise. He lifted the trooper into the air, holding him by the head and the groin, and he brought his hands together sharply. The man was neatly folded, his back cracking sickeningly under the force.

Other possessed Chaos Marines leapt from the rocks above, crashing down through the rain to land amongst the enemy hacking and slaughtering, ripping and rending. Blood sprayed the rocks as the Guardsmen died.

Letting the power of the daemon overcome him, Burias-Drak'shal and his possessed comrades slew until there were no more foes to kill. He stood, chest heaving for a moment before leaping off through the darkness on all fours, scenting other enemies nearby. He howled into the night and felt the rest of his pack spread out to either side of him, to encircle the next gathering of meat.

Heavy bolter fire tore through the Guardsmen, taking down five men in a screaming burst. Their bodies were ripped apart, bolts tearing through armour as if it were made of paper, and punching through the soft flesh beneath. Blood sprayed out, and Boerl swung his head to see a massive armoured shape turning its rapid-firing guns in his direction. It was at least five metres tall and nearly as wide.

'Emperor above,' swore Boerl as fresh shells fed into the twin-linked heavy bolters of the Dreadnought, and it unleashed its barrage of deadly fire. He leapt to the side, rolling as the heavy bolts tore through more of his men, and came to his feet running.

He blasted a Chaos Space Marine in the head with his lasgun as he moved, the shot striking the warrior's helmet, rocking him backwards but failing to pierce the powerful armour. Ignoring the reeling Chaos Space Marine, Boerl charged towards the towering Dreadnought. He reached to his belt and pulled loose a melta bomb as he neared the hellish machine annihilating his men.

The thing was huge and the ground reverberated with its step, servos whining. Skulls and helmets, rammed upon black iron spikes, adorned the machine's shoulders. There were helmets of loyal Space Marines there as well as dozens of skulls, some human, but many from various xenos creatures.

The Dreadnought swung a heavy, taloned fist at Boerl, flames gushing out from the underslung flamer on the massive, armoured arm. Ducking the blow, the colonel hissed as the flames washed over his back, and he almost fell to the ground as overwhelming pain assailed him. Gritting his teeth, he flicked the activation switch of the deadly melta-bomb and hurled it onto the armoured bulk of the machine. It struck a pitted and inscribed armoured shoulder plate above the heavy bolters that continued to roar, flames spitting from the barrels. It clanked loudly as it stuck fast, the powerful electro-magnets stuck fast to the metal.

Boerl ducked another swinging arm that would have ripped his head from his shoulders and leapt away before the melta-bomb did its destructive work. Rolling to see the results of his handiwork, his heart sank as the Dreadnought picked the grenade off its armoured bulk and flicked it away with its surprisingly dextrous power claw.

Boerl scrambled to his feet just as the Dreadnought swung its heavy bolters around to bear, and dozens of shots ripped through his armour. The Dreadnought continued to pump shot after shot into the colonel long after he was dead, keeping his body dancing in the air for a moment. Colonel Boerl's body was finally torn completely in half, and it fell to the ground, bloody and unrecognizable.

'Death to the False Emperor!' roared the Warmonger as it stepped forwards. It smashed a mechanical foot down onto the shattered body of the pathetic wretch, grinding it into the wet ground.

Where was this battle taking place? The thought swam through what remained of the Warmonger's ancient mind. Where was Lorgar? He scanned the battlefield quickly but could see no sign of the revered primarch. No matter. Here were enemies of his lord, and he would allow them no quarter.

The Warmonger opened up once again with his heavy bolters, seeing the weakling men before him ripped apart as he unleashed his deadly salvo. He began to advance once more, death roaring from his guns. One lightly armoured soldier stumbled too close, and the Dreadnought swept him up in its massive power claw, lifting the wretch high, so that all his brethren could see his demise. The Warmonger squeezed, servos in his claw whining, and the man broke. He was hurled to the ground, a bloody and very dead corpse.

'For the Warmaster!' roared the Dreadnought, and continued to kill.

Marduk chanted from the Epistles of Lorgar as he killed, filling the Word Bearers with fiery hatred for the weakling foe as they slew. He saw the Guardsmen fall away from him in horror, and he imagined that in death they heard the truth in his words: that the Emperor was a false deity, a fraud and a traitor, and that the bearers of the truth were murdering them. They cried out to their fraudulent god for mercy, but his impotence was clear when no salvation came to save them. In death they could see that only the gods of Chaos were worthy of worship.

The sheer audacity and arrogance of the foe astounded Marduk. Against any other foe, a combined assault of air-lifted infantry, supported by heavy weapons and timed to strike in unison with an elite force dropping from the sky, may have worked. To hammer the foe first with barrages from the air, these were good tactics against any other foe. Indeed, they were tactics that Kol Badar made use of frequently.

But to have the misconstrued belief that these tactics would work against the Word Bearers, Chaos Space Marines, and that these pitiful men could drive them from their positions was beyond the First Acolyte's comprehension.

It was true that the enemy were great in number. Hundreds more troops were dropping through the storm clouds every minute, though they were not as heavily armed or armoured (he scoffed at this even as he thought it) as were the first to land. These men were regular Imperial Guardsmen. But numbers meant nothing against Chaos Space Marines, and Marduk was certain that the battle would soon be over.

The daemon within his chainsword was feeding well. He carved the screaming blade down into the collarbone of another Guardsman, its teeth biting deep, ripping and tearing through armour, bone and soft flesh. His strength was behind the blow, and the eagerness of the daemon drove the whirring teeth deeper. The man fell to the ground, a bloody rent ripped to his sternum.

Marduk swayed to the side and a missile screamed past him. He continued quoting from the Epistles without pause.

'The favoured son of Chaos, Our lord and our mentor, The bearer of truth. He is with us today, And upon all the battlefields where we strive, Bringing faith to the faithless, And death to the heedless. Always he watches, and lends us his strength! he quoted.

'Hear me, my brothers! Lorgar watches us! Make him proud!' roared Marduk, blasting the head from an enemy with his bolt pistol and hacking down another with his chainsword.

The Word Bearers fought with a fury and hatred that had been nurtured for thousands of years, and despite being heavily outnumbered, they were butchering the Imperials that continued to drop in.

The dark shape of a possessed warrior-brother appeared atop a rocky outcrop, and it leapt through the air, smashing into a Guardsman plummeting towards the ground, his grav-chute yet to activate. Other shapes leapt from the rocks to snatch more drop-troopers out of midair, and Jarulek smiled.

Burias-Drak'shal's hunt had gone well.

CHAPTER TEN

'So, the enemy still holds the high ground. Emperor-knows how many men we lost. A formation of Marauders is missing, presumed shot down, though Throne only knows how. There are at least forty Valkyries either destroyed or needing serious repairs,' snarled Brigadier-General Havorn, his tall, gaunt form trembling with rage. 'And to top it all off, Colonel Emmet Boerl of the 72nd was killed in action.'

Captain Laron stood before the glowering brigadier-general, his gaze fixed forward. Alongside him were the other captains of the 72nd. Laron was the only one of them to have been engaged in the failed attempt to take the mountain highlands. Indeed, he was the only captain to have returned of those who had attacked the mountains, and he felt that most of the brigadier-general's ire was directed at him.

'I ought to have the lot of you executed on the spot, care of Commissar Kheler here,' he said gesturing to a black-clad officer behind him. Laron flicked a glance towards the commissar. The man returned his stare coldly.

'But I will not, as I find the 72nd has a sudden lack of officers,' said Havorn.

He towered over Laron by half a head, though what the captain lacked in height he made up for in brawn. The brigadier-general was a lanky man, and he truly was one of the ugliest individuals that Laron had ever seen.

Where Captain Laron represented physically everything that the Elysians were famed for, the muscular build, the blond hair and the grey-blue eyes set in a handsome, chiselled face, Brigadier-General Havorn was the polar opposite. Tall, thin and dark haired, his eyes were as black as sin and his face was narrow, long and just plain ugly. His hair was clipped to the scalp, and scars riddled his face and head, curling his lip into a permanent sneer. His one extravagance was the long, grey moustache hanging to either side of his scowling mouth.

'Captain Laron, I am instating you as acting colonel of the 72nd,' said the brigadier-general. Laron felt a flutter of pride rise within him, but he tried hard to make sure it didn't reach his face.

'With an emphasis on the word acting,' continued the brigadier-general. 'You are only in that position because there is no one better, for the time being. Once we are done with this cursed planet and return to the main crusade fleet, I will request a more suitable replacement for Colonel Boerl.'

The taller man leant down and forward so that he was looking directly into Laron's eyes, his hooked nose only centimetres from the captain's face.

'I don't know you well, Laron, but Colonel Boerl rated you highly. Do not dishonour his memory,' said the brigadier-general quietly, before turning away.

'I am assigning Commissar Kheler to keep watch over you. He has been a trusted advisor of mine for over a decade. His grasp of tactics and morale is strong. If there is ever a moment when it looks as if your arrogance or your pride are going to make you do something stupid that will get good men killed, the good commissar here will take steps to rectify the situation, with a bullet through your head.

'Do I make myself clear, acting Colonel Laron of the 72nd Elysians?'

The muscles in Laron's jaw clenched and he felt his cheeks redden.

'Yes, brigadier-general, I understand your meaning perfectly, sir.'

'Good,' said the tall man, turning and walking around his desk before sinking into his leather chair.

'You are dismissed, officers of the 72nd. Not you, acting colonel.'

His face burning, Laron stood motionless as the other men filed out of the room.

'Now,' said the brigadier-general, 'we need to establish how to get a victory after your devastatingly average attack against the highlands.'

They had awoken him and the other surviving members of his worker team from their allocated two-hour rest break by throwing a bucket of warm water over them. Or, at least Varnus had thought it was water at first, until he tasted it on his tongue: it was blood, fresh and human. The overseers coughed vilely, what passed for laughter amongst them, and jerked at slaves' neck chains to get them to their feet.

The dreams were getting worse. The blaring of the Discord never ceased, and he heard it as he slept, the hideous sound seeping into his brain like a vile parasite, twisting and corrupting within him. It was no release from torment when he closed his eyes and fell into fitful sleep. No, if anything, his dreams were worse than his waking life. He saw a world utterly consumed by Chaos, its sky a roiling miasma of fire and lava. The land was not truly rock or soil, but a pile of skinless, moaning bodies that stretched as far as the eye could see in all directions. For all he knew, the planet was made entirely from these mewling, bloody wretches. Every one of them had a metal star of Chaos bolted to its forehead, the same mark that he also bore. Endless, monotonous chanting filled his head, intoning words of worship and praise. He saw this place every time he closed his eyes, not just when he slept, but every time he even blinked his eyes against the sulphurous, polluted air.

Praise ye the glory of Chaos screamed the Discord in his mind, blurred with hateful screams, words and bellows. Kill him! they said. Traitor!

Varnus stumbled along with the other slaves. He looked around in confusion as they turned off the well-worn path leading towards the tower that rose nearly a hundred metres into the air and headed off in a different direction. He saw his confusion mirrored in Pierlo's wild eyes, his only true companion here in this living hell.

Someone is here already, he said to himself. He could feel it in the air. Liberation was at hand. He prayed to the Emperor, curse his name, that his hated captors would soon be blasted from the face of the planet by the force of the Imperium.

He grinned stupidly at the thought.

Dully, he came to his senses to find that the line of slaves had stopped.

'On your knees, dogs,' said an overseer in his grating voice, the translator box over its mouth vibrating.

Without thought, he dropped to his knees. The overseers produced long, rusted metal spikes, and walked behind the line of slaves. They pulled the chains backwards violently, dropping the slaves onto their backs. Standing on the chains to either side of each slave, they hammered the heavy chains to the ground with the thick spikes.

Within moments, Varnus heard screaming from other slaves, but from his position he could not see what was happening. All he could see were the slaves directly to either side of him. On one side, a man cried, his eyes tightly closed as he mouthed the silent words of a prayer. The star upon his forehead was clearly visible, and steam seemed to rise from the skin around it, forming blisters. The stink of burning flesh reached Varnus's nostrils. Needle-tipped fingers plunged into the man's neck abruptly and he convulsed frantically, his prayer forgotten. His head stopped steaming and Varnus realised that it must have been the prayer that had caused the reaction.

Turning to the other side, he saw Pierlo looking at him closely with his crazed eyes.

'What now?' hissed the man. He didn't seem overly distressed to Varnus, but perhaps that was his way of dealing with this horror. He envied the man, briefly. Kill him, came the voice within the blare of the Discord.

'What new torture is this?'

The dark figures of chirurgeons loomed over Varnus. They were loathsome creatures, their hunched forms covered in shiny, black material. There was an unholy stink about them that made him gag, and their arms ended in arrays of needles, clamps and syringes.

Something was writhing in the hands of the hateful surgeons and he felt sickness pull within his gut at the sight of the vile, wriggling thing. It was a small, mechanical, flat box that looked somewhat like the translator machines that the overseers spoke through. However, the thin sides of the box were coated in a smooth, black-oily skin that pulsed with movement from within. Four short, stubby tentacles waved from the corners of the box, fighting at the chirurgeon's grasp. His gaze was forcefully removed from the vile blend of mechanics and daemon spawn as a further pair of black-clad chirurgeons pulled his head around.

'Open your mouth,' came the voice of an overseer at his ear, but Varnus resisted. Pain jolted through him as the overseer ran one of its needle fingers along his neck, and he opened his mouth wide in a cry of pain. The chirurgeons darted eagerly forwards with their mechanical hands, whirring power clamps gripping his front teeth. Without ceremony, the teeth were ripped from his jaw. Blood poured from the holes in his gums and he groaned in pain.

Yet the chirurgeons had not finished their brutal surgery. Gripping his head tightly, one of them leant forwards with another mechanical device, and Varnus tried to pull away from it desperately, blood running down his throat and spurting over his chin. He could not escape the attentions of the twisted, hunched chirurgeon, however, and as its partner hit Varnus's lower jaw to close his mouth, the first sadistic creature slammed its mechanical device into the side of his face.

A metal, barbed staple, half a hand-length wide, punched through the bone of Varnus's jaw and cheek, pinning his mouth closed. The metal bit deep into the bone, and Varnus gargled in agony. A second staple punched into the bone on the other side of his face.

That was when the black, tentacled thing was brought towards him. The chirurgeon thrust the fighting thing at his face and Varnus screamed, his jaw stapled shut, in pain and terror. He tried to turn away, but his head was held tight and the box was placed over his mouth.

He screamed and screamed as the four questing tentacles probed his skin, the touch stinging and burning his flesh. The tentacles felt their way across his face, and with horror he realised there was a fifth, thicker tentacle pushing through the gap in his front teeth and into his mouth. No, it wasn't a tentacle, he realised as his tongue touched the vile thing. It was a hollow, fleshy tube, and as it entered his mouth it began to expand and push itself down into his throat, flattening his tongue against the base of his mouth.

Two tentacles latched under Varnus's jaw, burrowing into his flesh to secure a tight hold, and the remaining two leech-like appendages wriggled across his cheeks, probing at the corners of his eyes before burrowing agonisingly into the skin at his temples. He roared in excruciating pain, the sound alien and strangely mechanical to his ears, altered by the thing clamped firmly over his mouth and nose. He breathed in deeply which was heavy and difficult, and he felt a foul, sickly sweet taste in his mouth and nose.

White-hot pain shot through his head as the tentacles burrowed further into his flesh. They ceased wriggling within him, but the pain remained. His breathing was laboured and the figures above him went hazy, spots of light appearing before him, and he fell into the nightmare of his unconsciousness.

The warriors of the Adeptus Mechanicus stepped inexorably forwards, like a seething, relentless carpet, spread out across the hard-packed salt plain. Some amongst them were almost human, though even these were hard-wired into the weapon systems they bore, their brain stems augmented with mechanics and sensors. The Coryphaus had seen their like before. He had fought against loyalist members of the Cult Mechanicus on their Forge Worlds during the advance on Terra ten thousand years earlier. More recently, he had fought alongside those members of the Machine Cult that had long sworn their allegiance to the true gods, the powers of Chaos.

Sheer cliffs rose up on either side of the valley their tops hidden by dark, brooding, heavy cloud. The rumble of thunder boomed from the heavens and flashes punctuated the dark, threatening sky. The insides of the massed, bulbous clouds lit up as lightning crackled within, arcing, skeletal fingers of electricity that clawed across their surface.

The rain had been falling for almost an hour, hard and driving, lashing down upon the servitors as they plodded forwards at the impulse of their masters. The ground beneath their feet was pooled with salt sludge. The grinding tracks of weapon platforms and hissing crawlers ripped up the ground, creating mires in their wake as they slowly advanced amongst the serried cohorts of mindless and augmented servitors.

Visibility was poor across the open ground, as waves of driving rain were driven into the valley by the fierce winds that were picking up.

Screaming shells descended out of the gloom, accompanied by the constant ramble of artillery that was almost indiscernible from the sound of the building storm. They fell from the high ridges to either side of the valley, obscured by cloud and rain, and detonated amongst the ranks of servitor warriors, sending flesh and mechanics flying in all direction. Red blood and pale, unnatural fluids mixed with the pooling waters underfoot. They made no cries of fear or pain as they were destroyed, though even if they had they would not have carried through the pounding torrents of falling rain.

While visibility was poor for the Word Bearers, who were barely able to see the advancing enemy just rounding the dog-leg of the valley, the wretched slaves that Kol Badar had brought with him were virtually blind. They stood close together, weeping and terrified, shivering in the icy wind and rain that battered at them. They were chained together still, in long lines, clustered in front of the massive Word Bearers, who stood oblivious and uncaring of the hardships they endured at being exposed to the elements.

Kol Badar ordered the advance. Confused and deafened by the sheer fury of the downpour, they looked around blankly. Word Bearers pushed them roughly forward with the barrels of their bolters. A few shots into their midst soon had them moving, and almost five thousand slaves were goaded on through the torrential downpour. Scores of them fell, bustled by their terrified comrades. They were crushed underfoot, many drowning in the pooling, ankle deep water as their desperate companions scrambled over them, their only thought being to keep in front of their tormentors. Their limp, lifeless bodies were forced along with the push of humanity and dragged by the chains secured to their necks.

The Word Bearers advanced behind the seething mass of terrified slaves. They intoned from the Book of Lorgar as they marched through the strengthening rain, while the melancholic phrases recited by those warriors within their Rhino and Land Raider transports blared out from amplifiers on the outsides of the vehicles. Ancient, holy Predator tanks, their mighty turrets and weapon sponsons decorated with scriptures, bronze daemonic maws and icons scrawled in blood, rolled forwards at the wings of the Word Bearers, alongside Defilers and other daemon engines. The howls of the machines rose through the rain that hissed and turned to steam as it neared the infernal hulls of the hellish creations. Dreadnoughts were guided forwards by black-clad handlers, screaming insanely or reliving ancient battles long passed. Kol Badar and his Anointed warriors walked in the centre of the line.

The bombardment from the ridges above continued unabated, but Kol Badar was furious. There should have been more fire coming from above, and he was still angered by his earlier conversation.

'Unacceptable losses against a weakling foe,' he had growled through the vox-unit.

'My warriors hold the ridges still, Coryphaus,' was the snarled response from Marduk, the First Acolyte.

'The barrage will not be as effective as anticipated. Your failure will cost the lives of more of our brethren,' retorted Kol Badar.

'You did not predict an attack of such strength,' snapped Marduk. 'If there has been a failure, it has been yours.'

Kol Badar lashed out in anger towards an attendant daubing fresh sigils on his armour, but pulled the blow just before it connected, and merely clenched the talons of his power fist tightly, instead. The robed figure flinched backwards, then tentatively continued with its work. If the warlord had continued through with the strike, it would have instantly killed the attendant.

'You go too far. One day soon there will be a reckoning between us, whelp,' Kol Badar had promised, before severing the vox transmission.

The slaves stampeded ahead of the Word Bearers, running blindly through the rain. They began to die before they even glimpsed their killers.

A thick beam of white energy surged out of the gloom, cutting through the ranks of slaves. Their bodies burst into blue and white flames that rose fiercely, melting the chains binding the wretches to dripping liquid. A millisecond later, the flames all but died away, leaving piles of white ash in the shapes of the victims. A second later the morbid statues crumbled as they were trampled by the press of bodies that filled the sudden gap in the ranks.

As if the shot was the clarion call announcing the commencement of battle, the gloom was suddenly ripped apart as the guns of the Adeptus Mechanicus spoke. Blasts of plasma screamed through the air, massive rotating assault cannons upon the back of tracked units roared as they began to spin, and salvoes of hellfire missiles were launched.

The slaves surged through the inferno of death, hundreds of them slaughtered within the first second of the barrage. Those at the rear turned to flee from this new threat, but the bolters of the Word Bearers barked, dropping them in droves. And so, the slaves surged forwards once more, running towards those that they would call allies, who were cutting them down mercilessly, killing them in droves.

A barking roar was unleashed as the Skitarii fired. Heavy bolters tore through the flesh of the slaves, and flashes from thousands of lasguns streaked through the rain.

The chained slaves surged towards those who appeared, through the gloom, to be Imperial Guardsmen, clearly not registering that their saviours were to be their executioners.

Kol Badar laughed as the Cult Mechanicus wasted its ammunition. All the while, the Word Bearers marched relentlessly forwards, shielded by the flesh of the Imperial slaves.

The Chaos Space Marines began to fire their own weapons. Lascannons from the lower reaches of the ridge seared down through the gloom, spearing into the heavy weapon platforms grinding along slowly. Predators of ancient, extinct design and Land Raiders daubed with Chaos sigils added their own weight to the fire, and the demented Dreadnoughts and daemon engines roared in excitement, bitterness and anger as they sighted the foe. Battle cannons boomed, autocannons shrieked, missiles screamed through the rain and heavy bolters barked.

The Anointed opened up, cutting down the last of the slaves as they neared the true foe. Striding forwards, Kol Badar saw the approaching ranks of Skitarii through the press of frantic slaves and impatiently shot down those in his way.

The front rank of the foe consisted of heavily augmented servitor warriors with massive shields built into their mechanical arms. These shields shimmered with power as they deflected bolter shots, protecting them and those in the ranks behind. They advanced slowly step by lumbering step, a walking barricade, firing their lasguns through the slaves and into the advancing Word Bearers. The top right corner of each shield was cut down to allow the larger guns of those behind to fire. The two opposing forces were close, and the fusillade was furious. Kol Badar grinned as he powered unscathed through the carnage, the revered plasteel plating of his Terminator armour absorbing the incoming fire.

He had ensured that his most vicious, blood-hungry warriors, those who strayed closest to the dedicated worship of blessed Khorne, were the first wave of Word Bearers to engage the enemy, and they cleaved into the foe with brutal force. The heavy shields of the front line of the enemy were hacked down with powerful blows from chainaxes and spiked power mauls, and bolter fire tore into the flesh of those behind. The shield-servitors were slow and lumbering, though they took a lot of punishment before they stopped moving. Kol Badar saw several of them fighting on, even with limbs hacked off and bolt having removed parts of their skulls.

Lasgun shots peppered off Kol Badar's armour like flies, and he punched his talons through a heavy shield, sparks flying and power conduits screaming as the blow impaled the Skitarii through its neck. With a flick of his arm, he hurled the servitor warrior over his shoulder, and unleashed his combi-bolter on full auto into the packed Skitarii ranks behind. These were softer targets. They had been augmented in lesser ways, not taking them fully down the path to becoming mindless servitors. Targeting sensors had replaced their left eyes, and the left halves of their heads were a mass of wiring and mechanics, but their bodies were easily torn apart by the bolter fire of the advancing Word Bearers.

At a distance, they would be dangerous foes, for many of them carried heavier armaments than a humble Guardsman would be able to bear, but up close they were slaughtered by the brute force and speed of the Word Bearers. The Anointed bludgeoned their way into the heart of the Skitarii formation. It mattered not to these elite killers that the enemy fought on after having sustained wounds that would drop a regular human. The Word Bearers, and the Anointed in particular, were far from regular humans themselves - they were demi-gods of war, and they tore apart the Skitarii with fury and passion.

Within ten minutes, as if a switch was flicked inside the mechanical heads of the thousands of remaining Skitarii, they began to re-form, walking steadily backwards as one, while continuing to lay down their withering fire into the Chaos Marines.

With a surge of his servo-enhanced muscles, Kol Badar pushed forwards into the retreating foe, punching the whirling chainblade that served as a bayonet upon his combi-bolter through the pudgy white face of another foe, and ripping the head and spinal column from another, electrodes and sparking fuses still attached to the vertebrae.

Heavily armoured servitors moved to the fore, stalking forwards between the ordered ranks of the lesser warriors, and Kol Badar was pleased to see that these foes were more to his liking. Around the height of a regular Chaos Space Marine, these were heavily armoured in thick, dark, metal armour. The mechanics of their left arms ended in spinning cannons that roared as they pumped fire from their multiple barrels. Ammo-feeds smoked as fresh bullets were fed to the guns from heavy integrated backpacks.

Concentrated bursts from the weapons were carving through power armour, and Kol Badar hissed in anger as he was rocked backwards by their force, though his Terminator armour was not breached. He fired his combi-bolter, blasting the gun-arm from a warrior in a shower of sparks, but it kept coming at him swinging its other arm towards him in a murderous thrust as the drill-arm began to spin. Metallic tentacles attached to the Skitarii's spinal column reached forwards to ensnare him, but Kol Badar had no intentions of backing away from the machine warrior.

With a backhand swipe of his power talons, he smashed the whirling, industrial drill away and fired his combi-bolter into the chest of the foe. Mechadendrite tentacles latched onto his chest and shoulder plates, and small drill pieces whined as they began to bore neat holes through the ancient suit. Firing his bolter again into the chest of the warrior, he ripped at the tentacles. Their grip on him was stronger than their binding to the warrior's spine, and he ripped them free of the Skitarii's back. Firing again, its armour cracking and shattering, the Skitarii fell onto its back. Kol Badar ended its straggles by slamming his heavy foot down into its head, pulverising the human skull and brain within its blank, metal faceplate.

Ripping off the tentacles still attached to his armour, he saw with pride that not one of his Anointed had fallen to these warriors, though several power armoured warrior-brothers had succumbed to their weaponry. He saw one of the Skitarii warriors torn apart by the fire from the reaper autocannon of one cult member, its chest a ruin of armour, machinery and seeping blood.

The enemy continued to retreat, but the thought of calling off the battle never entered Kol Badar's head. He would push on, deep into the foe, and inflict as much damage as possible, only calling off the attack when the terrain began to favour the Imperials once more. Even then, calling off the slaughter would be difficult, nigh on impossible, for the frenzied Dreadnoughts that were ploughing into the enemy.

One of the insane war machines broke into a lumbering run, smashing aside a warrior-brother in its eagerness to reach the foe. It was roaring incoherently, and gunfire leapt from its twin autocannon barrels and from the underslung bolters beneath its scything array of war blades. Other, swifter warrior-brothers backed out of the way of the charging machine, and it ripped into the Skitarii, its war blades cutting down four of them with one scissoring blow.

The Coryphaus recognised the Dreadnought as housing the corpse of Brother Shaldern, who had fallen against the hated coward Legion of Rouboute Gulliman, the Ultramarines, during the battle on Calth. His sanity had long since abandoned him. Such was the way with those entombed within the sarcophagi of the dangerous war machines, and Kol Badar wondered briefly if he would rather die upon the field of battle than suffer endless torment within one of those cursed engines. Few retained any semblance of rationality. That the Warmonger maintained as much lucidity as he did was a testament to the intense faith and belief that the Dark Apostle had wielded in life, and had taken with him into his hateful half-life.

The machine ploughed through the enemy and a great roar went up from the Word Bearers.

'Forward, warrior-brothers!' Kol Badar bellowed. 'For the glory of the Legion!'

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Mechadendrites attached to the spinal column of Techno-Magos Darioq stretched out before him. Needle-like electro-jacks emerged from the tips of these mechanical, clawed tentacles and plunged into circular plugs around the base of the cylindrical device rising smoothly from the floor of the control room. Each of the electro-jacks was around fifteen centimetres in length, and they rotated as the magos connected with the machine-spirit of his command vehicle.

The room was dark and claustrophobic, with exposed pipes and wires lining the walls and twisting across the low ceiling. Eerie light spilled from the screens around the room as lines of data flicked across their surfaces. Hissing steam vented from latticed grills in the floor plates, and thick, ribbed tubing snaked from the grills to climb the walls and disappear amongst the dense, confusing network of conduits.

Pilots and technicians hard-wired into the control room were built into the walls, their forms almost hidden amongst the mass of coiling pipes that engulfed them. Insulated wiring entered the fused hemispheres of their brains through eye sockets, nostrils and ears. They manipulated controls through cables that plugged into the remnants of flesh that remained of their mortal bodies, and from each fingertip spread a spider web of intricate cables, attaching them directly into the holy machine that they were a part of.

Darioq muttered the incantation of supplication to the machine-spirit and recited the logis dictates that would ignite the spark of connection as his electro-jacks continued to manipulate the inner core workings of the command column. Speaking blessings to the Omnissiah, he tripped the internal switches within his own mechanised form, and his spirit joined with that of his flagship in a surge of images, information and release.

Hovering fifty metres in the air, the bloated airship that served as Darioq's command centre was as stable as the ground, despite the torrential downpour of rain and the sharp burst of wind that the magos felt buffeting its banded sides. Connected to the huge machine's spirit, he felt the rain and wind on its thick sides as if it were an extension of himself. Massive rotating spotlights that cut through the darkness were his eyes, and endless feeds of information flooded through the multiple logic engines within his construction, filing through the domed hemispheres of his ''true'' brain, which then filtered relevant data out into the charged liquid housing domes that enclosed his secondary brain units.

He felt the smooth running engines that powered the mass turbines keeping the hulk airborne, and sensed the holy oils lubricating the cogs and gears slipping through the mechanics, as the dictates required. He could feel the scurrying feet of servitors, Skitarii and priests through the labyrinthine tunnels within the airship's underhull, and the spark of sensation as these servants of the Omnissiah plugged themselves into the vast machine, linking them to him and him to them. He could see through the augmetic eyes of these lesser minions and feel the twitch of their vat-born muscles.

His spirit reached out through the thick, insulated cabling that fed from his control station, travelling through the circuitry and carefully constructed piping that linked the airship to the Ordinatus Magentus far below. He linked himself to the intractable spirit of that great creation and whispered a prayer to the shrine-machine as he flowed through its holy workings.

Probing at the plasma-reactor at the core of the Magentus, he felt the contained power within, a blessing from the Machine-God. Back in his command station, he felt the vibratory impulse that pre-empted a vox transmissions arrival. An electro-pulse fired within Darioq's true brain and the magos recognised the sensation as irritation. He retracted his spirit from that of the Magentus in an instant and returned to his flagship. Though he remained in connection with the airship, he allowed his physical faculties to come to the fore and received visual stimulus through the glowing crystals of his augmetic right eye, and through the blearing, inferior gaze of his left, organic eye.

With a twist of one of his mechadendrites, Darioq turned a function dial on the command pillar and a hololith atop the pillar sparked into life. A three-dimensional image of an Imperial Guard officer sprang into existence, his every feature picked out in the intricate network of crisscrossing green lines. It showed the man's head and shoulders, and extended down to his chest.

'Blessings of the Omnissiah to you, Brigadier-General Ishmael Havorn,' said Darioq.

'Blessings of the God-Emperor to you, magos,' said the green rendering of Havorn, the sound issuing from the speaker box built into the command pillar slightly out of time with the movement of the lips.

'Your tech-guard suffer many losses, my reports tell me.'

'The losses of the servitors and Skitarii units is acceptable, Brigadier-General Ishmael Havorn. The Hypaspists and the Sagitarii units are replaceable. The Praetorians' destruction was necessary to conduct the falling back of the cohorts. The loss of several of the Ordinatus Minoris machines of the Ballisterarii is regrettable, but predicted by my cogitator engine. The Omnissiah has reclaimed their spirits unto the bosom of Mars.'

'And are your preparations for the second push proceeding as planned, magos?'

'The Exemplis advances, Brigadier-General Ishmael Havorn, and a larger concentration of cohort units advances beneath its hallowed shadow. My Cataphractarii lead the holy procession.'

'Six companies of the 133rd will accompany your tech-guard. They are advancing as we speak. Alongside them are heavy armour squadrons,' said the image of the Elysian commander. 'Members of the 72nd will reengage the foe within the highlands to coincide with our combined assault.'

'I will accede to your wishes, Brigadier-General Ishmael Havorn. Your flesh units and heavy armour will accompany the second push.'

The image of Havorn's face frowned darkly, but Techno-Magos Darioq had long passed the point of being able to read facial expressions. He could read more from a blank data-slate or the turning of an engine than he could from the facial contortions of the fleshed.

'Never have I heard of such willingness by the Mechanicus to throw its tech-guard at an enemy, but one threatening one of the Forge Worlds. You can understand my… confusion, magos.'

'The Adeptus Mechanicus supports the armies of the Emperor in all endeavours, Brigadier-General Ishmael Havorn. The Adeptus Mechanicus wishes to support the battle against the enemy on this planet c6.7.32.'

'Yes, as you have said, magos. I just wish to the Emperor that I knew why.'

'To many within the Cult Mechanicus, the Emperor of Terra and the Omnissiah are one. They would say that the Imperial Guard and the regiments of Mars enact his will equally.'

The image of Havorn raised its eyebrow at a figure off-screen.

'It is usual for brothers in arms to share pertinent information regarding their purpose.'

'The Adeptus Mechanicus wishes to support the battle against the enemy on this planet c6.7.32. That is the purpose of this expedition force.'

'Expedition force? This is a war zone!'

'You are correct, Brigadier-General Ishmael Havorn. Your voice has risen by 1.045 octaves, and my logarithmic codifier indicates that your volume has increased by 37.854 Imperial standard decibels. Are you unwell, Brigadier-General Ishmael Havorn?'

'What?' asked the Imperial commander.

'Your voice has risen by—' began Darioq before he was interrupted.

'Emperor above!' exclaimed Havorn.

'The mnemo strands within my logic engines suggest that some savage cultures within the Imperium believe that the Emperor does exist beyond the atmosphere of their home world. Do you believe this, Brigadier-General Ishmael Havorn? Is that why you speak the words "Emperor above"?'

'Are you attempting a joke, magos? I thought such a thing was beyond one such as you.'

'I do not understand the concept of humour, Brigadier-General Ishmael Havorn. My memory functions contain the information pertaining to the notion, but I have erased my memories of such a notion as inconsequential to the Omnissiah.'

The image of Havorn stared fixedly at the inscrutable visage of Darioq. The magos waited patiently for the Elysian commander to speak once more.

'Move the Exemplis to the front line. We attack before dawn,' he said, and cut the connection.

Darioq removed his mechadendrites from the command pillar and the image of Havorn, frozen in a scowl when the Elysian severed the connection, disappeared. A ghostly after-image remained for a second before it too faded.

He stood motionless for a moment, his brains alight with sparks of thought. For a few moments the eyelid of his weak, organic flesh-eye flickered as he accessed information stored deep within one subsidiary cortex, and he plunged the blade of the electro-jack on the tip of one of his mechadendrites back into the column.

Another green-lined image sprang up, hovering above the surface of the command column. It showed the rotating sphere of a planet, a stark, rocky and lifeless world. Polar ice-flows spread out across much of the land. Temperature indicators marked the planet as being far below a temperature that was able to sustain life. A light flashed beneath the hovering image of the planet. It was a date, in standard Imperial time, and it indicated that this was the representation of a planet almost two thousand years in the past.

With a twist of his mechadendrite, Darioq caused a second planet to be projected alongside the first. This was a world dominated by water, seas covering the length and breadth of the sphere, but two continent. With a further twist, Darioq brought the two glowing planets together, so that they overlapped each other perfectly. The mountains of the two images locked together like pieces of a puzzle. They were a perfect, identical match.

He rotated the overlapping spheres and magnified the image tenfold, zooming in on the north-western tip of the larger continent. The mountain plateau above the sea level rose to a point and then dropped off beneath the oceans. The cliff faces were almost sheer and fell into a series of deep undersea valleys, thousands of metres beneath the ocean. He zoomed closer, focusing on one particularly deep, abyssal chasm.

He abruptly retracted his mechadendrite and the green, three-dimensional depiction disappeared. Only the after image of the overlapping planets remained for a fraction of a second, along with a small line of digits beneath the spheres: c6.7.32. A moment later, they too faded.

It was almost midday, though it may as well have been midnight for all the light that penetrated the thick, roiling, black storm clouds. Torrential, blinding rain still lashed the high peaks of the mountains, and ravines and cracks were flooded with streaming water. In the valley below, vast moving rivers of water cut across the landscape, seeking the lower ground of the surrounding flat lands. Even the highly attuned sensors of the Word Bearers were becoming blocked by the high amount of water and electricity that coursed through the air.

The battle raged on, frenzied and devastating, and the bodies of Guardsmen floated through the mire. The wrecked shells of burned out vehicles and tanks were dragged through the rising waters. The Word Bearers strode through the shallower, knee-deep waters, firing into the massed ranks of the enemy.

Experimental weaponry of the Adeptus Mechanicus crackled and roared, ripping apart traitor vehicles and Dreadnoughts, and shells fell among both battle lines, causing torrents of water to explode into the air along with shattered bodies and armour. Coalescing arcs of energy streamed from the weapons borne upon the backs of tracked crawlers that inched forward through the mire of bodies and rain water.

Kol Badar had seen some of those weapons before. Many were weapons developed to be borne by the colossal war machines of the Titan Legions. Without the technology to continue to construct these behemoths of war, many of which were over a hundred metres in height, the Adeptus Mechanicus had clearly deemed it fit to mount these artillery pieces upon tracked crawler units, but the effectiveness of the weapons remained awesome.

Missiles streamed through the rain, exploding in white-hot blasts of super-heated energy. The ground was ripped apart in deep furrows that were instantly engulfed with water as other esoteric batteries fired, throwing warriors and vehicles aside as if they weighed nothing at all. Giant gouts of liquid flame roared through the darkness, engulfing scores of soldiers on both sides and heating the streaming waters of the valley to boiling point.

Casualties were rising, though the Imperials were losing scores of warriors for every Word Bearer that fell. The fervour, or impatience, of the Imperial commanders was strong. Despite their air raids being almost neutralised by the worsening weather conditions, they drove their forces ever onwards in a grinding battle of attrition, desperate it seemed to push the Legion back.

The Coryphaus had ordered the reserve of the Host forward, to reinforce the line of Word Bearers holding the valley. He had also demanded that Marduk leave the command of the ridges to the Warmonger, and for him to bolster the valley. While the lighter Imperial aircraft had been forced to pull out by the buffeting, gale force winds and lightning that had ripped many of their fighters from the air, the heavier Thunderhawks and Stormwings of the Word Bearers were able to remain airborne, albeit for only short flights before they retreated from the heart of the storm.

Marduk had fumed at the condescending tone of the order, but could recognise the danger. Holding the Imperials back was imperative, or the losses that they had already suffered were for nought, and the determined drive of the Imperials threatened to push through the Word Bearers' defence.

Roaring barrages continued to rain down from the ridge-tops, and lascannons and missiles lanced out of the darkness from the cliffs, targeting the tracked vehicles of the Mechanicus and the battle tanks that were rolling into the fray. Soaring missiles and rockets returned fire against the warriors under the Warmonger's command high above, but there was little that could truly reach them, high in the rocks. Nevertheless, it seemed not even to slow the ponderous advance of the Imperials, as ever more troops and vehicles filtered into the valley.

Chimera APCs spat sharp bursts of las-fire from their turret mounted multi-lasers, and strong waves were created as they ploughed through the deeper rivers that flowed across the battlefield. Easily as capable in the deep water as on land, the vehicles churned through the corpse-strewn mire to unload their cargoes of Guardsmen. Smoke-launchers fired, cloaking the battlefield behind white smoke that blocked even the auto-sensors and targeting arrays of the Word Bearers, but Marduk laughed as the smoke almost instantly dissipated in the gale. Several of the Chimeras were halted in their tracks as missiles and autocannon fire raked their hulls. The men scrambling to vacate the sinking metal coffins were gunned down by bolter fire. Another of the Chimeras was lifted into the air as it reached more solid ground when a Dreadnought struck its side with a massive siege ram before unleashing a flurry of missiles into another vehicle.

A formation of tracked units advanced through the gunfire, bolter fire pinging off their armoured forms. Humanoid upper bodies were integrated into the mechanised units and cannons protruded from the stumps of their arms. Marduk hacked through the metallic torso of a servitor warrior, spraying oil and blood, and broke into a loping run towards the strange, centaur-like creatures.

He felt the presence of Burias-Drak'shal at his side, the daemon soul of the warrior burning hotly. Two coteries of Word Bearers launched themselves forward in support of the First Acolyte and the Icon Bearer, bolters barking as they tore through the Skitarii warriors towards this new enemy,

Their movements jerky, the tracked centaur units fired controlled bursts from their rotating cannons as they rolled forwards. Their bodies were a mass of augmetic, metal body plating, and their heads were almost completely hidden in dark metal encasings, the only exception being the dead, staring left eyes that peered out from white flesh.

The lead unit turned its head jerkily in Marduk's direction and he felt the warning buzz from his auto-sensors as the mass of targeters arrayed over the servitor's right eye fixed on him.

With a snarl, Marduk threw himself into a roll as the mechanical warrior jerked the rotating barrels of its weapon in his direction and bullets began to spray towards him. They clipped his shoulder pad, taking chips out of the thick ceramite plating, and he fired his bolt pistol as he rose. Two bolts slammed into the face of the mechanised warrior, blowing a crater out the back of its head.

The other machines fired into the Word Bearers with short, sharp bursts. Marduk saw the chest of one warrior-brother ripped to shreds and the head of another pulverised.

With a roar, Burias-Drak'shal leapt onto one of the tracked machines as it rolled slowly forwards. He drove the daemon talons of one hand into the side of the Skitarii's head with such force that it punched through metal and bone, and pulverised the fused brain-hemispheres within. A burst of fire slammed into his lower back and the daemonically possessed warrior staggered. With a bellow that came from the pits of the Immaterium, Burias-Drak'shal spun and hurled the icon of the Host through the air like a spear. It slammed into the chest of the tracked creature that had shot him, impaling it on the large spikes that made up the eight-pointed star. Fluids ran from the wound and sparks engulfed the torso of the tracked machine, and it began to twitch convulsively. At a barked command from Burias-Drak'shal the icon ripped free of the malfunctioning machine and flew back to its master's hand.

Marduk launched into the Catechism of Hate and raising his daemonic chainsword high into the air, led the Word Bearers forward into the enemy. He pumped shot after shot into the mechanised torso of one of his foes, scoring deep craters across its armour. His chainsword bit through the thick tracks of the machine, and it floundered. Its expressionless face looked down upon him as it brought its weapon to bear, but Marduk moved swiftly around the immobilised machine, holstering his pistol. He pulled a krak grenade from his belt, pressing its igniting rune, and thrust it into the spinning cog-wheels of the damaged track unit.

He drew his pistol again as he charged towards the next machine, and the grenade detonated behind him. Flames washed over another machine, liquefying its flesh, but it fought on, its spinning cannon ripping the legs from a charging warrior at Marduk's side.

The press of the enemy was heavy, as other cohorts moved inexorably to support their kin, and Guardsmen pushed desperately forwards, vainly trying to drive the Word Bearers back. Las-bolts struck Marduk's armour and flames washed over him. Rapid firing rounds from the tracked machines raked him and he hissed in pain as one cracked a chink in the armour of his chest-plate.

His fiery words drove the Word Bearers on and they fought deep into the enemy formations. Blood flowed freely as he carved his screaming chainsword through the head of a Guardsman. A man stumbled towards him, his arm missing from the elbow down, and Marduk smashed him to the ground with the butt of his pistol before putting a round through the back of his head.

He felt savage joy as he slaughtered any who drew near him. He stumbled suddenly as a las-bolt pierced the armour of his thigh, searing the muscle beneath. He shot another man in the chest, his ribs exploding outwards as the explosive bolt detonated within.

An explosion tore the life from a pair of Word Bearers, and Marduk was rocked by the sudden blast, staggering to keep his footing as shrapnel scored across his armour. He saw a battle tank advance, the barrel of its turret smoking.

A heavy blow from his side smashed him to the ground and he felt the blessed ceramite of his shoulder pad compress as it absorbed the force of the blow. A servo-arm clamped around his torso as he tried to rise and he hissed in pain under the pressure. Power assisted pistons hissed as the clamps of the servo-arm tightened, and Marduk felt his ancient ceramite begin to buckle beneath the force.

He swung his chainsword into the neck of the servitor, and flesh and mechanics were ripped apart by the whirling teeth of the weapon. The fused bones of his ribcage strained as the pressure increased and he tried to bring his bolt pistol around for a shot, but the hold the combat servitor had on him made it impossible. Marduk pushed with all the force of his arm, driving his chainsword deeper into his foe's neck, but the crashing force did not relent.

A combi-bolter was placed into one the armature joints of the servo-arm, and bolts tore into the weak point, severing the limb. The combat servitor reeled backwards, the stump of its servo-arm spraying oil and milky liquid as it waved ineffectually, before another blast from the combi-bolter tore the servitor's head from its shoulders.

'One day the pleasure of killing you will be mine, and mine alone,' came a snarling voice. 'None will steal that prize from me.'

Marduk looked up at Kol Badar, standing over him. He could just imagine the smirk on the whoreson's face beneath his quad-tusked helmet, and he rose to his feet quickly, his face burning with shame and fury. His hand tightened around the grip of his chainsword, and he felt the daemon Borhg'ash willing him to lash out at the Coryphaus.

Kol Badar laughed as he turned away from the First Acolyte, his combi-bolter tearing another enemy to shreds. With a swat of his power claw he sent one of the tracked units toppling onto its side, where an Anointed cult member turned its head to molten metal and liquid, burning flesh with a searing blast from the meltagun slung beneath his bolter.

Simmering with anger, Marduk watched as Kol Badar grabbed the track unit of the battle tank in his massive power talons, ripping it clear in a shower of sparks and smoke. As the tank jerked to a halt, the warlord of the Word Bearers clenched his talons into a fist crackling with energy and, with a roar, smashed it into the armoured plating of the vehicle. The reinforced armour buckled under the power of the blow. The second blow punched straight through the armoured hull and Kol Badar wrenched his fist free, tangled metal screeching horribly. Placing the muzzle of his combi-bolter through the hole, he unloaded his clip inside the tank. The bolt-rounds ricocheted around the enclosed space deafeningly and there were screams from within.

As if feeling Marduk's gaze, Kol Badar turned towards him, and pointed at the First Acolyte with one of his crackling power talons. The message was clear: your time will come.

I welcome that time with open arms, thought Marduk, flushed with anger and bitterness.

The Imperial forces were being butchered. Despite their efforts to drive against the traitor Legion, they were making no ground. Worse, they were losing ground, being slowly pushed back by the fury of the Chaos Space Marines' resistance.

But that was soon to change.

The earth shuddered with each step of the Exemplis. It rose out of the gloom like a colossus of the ancients, a towering behemoth of awesome power. The mountains shook to their foundations as thousands of tonnes of metal slammed into the hard, salt packed earth of the flooding valley with each titanic step.

Those legs alone were mighty bastion fortresses, complete with battle cannon batteries and crenellated walls from which soldiers could pour fire into the foe. Within each leg was a demi-cohort consisting of Hypaspists and the elite biologically and mechanically enhanced Praetorians. But the leg bastions were the least of the weapons of the Exemplis.

Heaving some of the most powerful weapons ever conceived by the Adeptus Mechanicus, entire traitorous planets had surrendered at the mere appearance of the Exemplis. With weaponry the size of towering building blocks, each capable of demolishing cities and laying rain to armies, the Exemplis had been in operational use by the Fire Wasps of Legio Ignatum since the time of the Great Crusade.

The plasma reactor, burning with the contained energy of a sun, roared with terrifying power as a fraction of its energy was siphoned into the giant weaponry of the god-machine.

The Exemplis was one of the last remaining Imperator Titans of Legio Ignatum of Mars and was worshipped by the adepts of the Cult Mechanicus as an avatar of the Omnissiah. With thundering steps, it strode to war once more against the traitors that had turned their back on the Imperium of Man.

CHAPTER TWELVE

There was something distinctly wrong about the tower, something far more perverted and unearthly than Varnus could truly conceive. It was almost as if it was a sentient being, that it had thoughts and ambitions of its own, and that these thoughts and ambitions were seeping into the slaves that laboured over its living form.

It was large on an unfeasible, maddening scale, and continued to rise hundreds of metres into the sky with every passing change of shift. It was so high that were it not for the vile, living re-breather masks that had been attached to the slaves' faces, they would start to struggle for oxygen in the increasingly thin air, not to mention the noxious fumes that blanketed the shattered city. The smog fumes seemed inexorably drawn towards the tower, and they circled it lazily.

At times, the tentacles of the creature burrowed deeper into his skull, wriggling and twitching agonisingly. It could not be removed. He wondered if it could ever be removed, even under surgery, and he had seen more than one slave die while trying to tear the thing from their face. They ended up choking to death, blood seeping from their ears and eyes as the powerful, leech-like tentacles burrowed through their brains, seeking solid purchase, and the tubular, living pipes that ran down their oesophagi clenched shut.

The appearance of the slaves was drastically altered by the foul masks; they looked more like devotees of the dark gods than Imperial citizens, and Varnus realised that he too must resemble one of the hated ones.

The work on the tower was never-ending and the slaves were worked at a brutal pace, the overseers viciously punishing those that failed to meet their exacting demands. It was as if the whole operation had gone into overdrive, that there was a looming deadline fast approaching and the tower had to be completed. There must have been around two hundred thousand slaves working atop the walls alone, he estimated, and many more hundreds of thousands working down in the sink-hole that disappeared inside the shaft of the tower, burrowing ever deeper into Tanakreg's crust, down into the depths of the planet. All told, he estimated that there must have been a million slave workers toiling over the construction at any one time. More crane engines had been constructed, and along with thousands of slaves, they were strengthening the base of the tower, making it thicker with additional layers of bricks even as the tower soared up towards the heavens. In addition, they began work on a massive spiralling walkway, wide enough for a battle tank, that coiled its way around the exterior of the tower. It was a mammoth undertaking, but one that progressed at an astonishing pace.

There must have been dire sorceries involved, for the tower had already surpassed the height of the greatest construction that he had ever heard of, and logic dictated that it simply could not rise higher without toppling, or collapsing beneath its own weight. But rise higher it did, defying the laws of the material universe.

Although he loathed the monstrous tower as he hated his overseers and captors, he could not help but have strange paternal feelings over the mass of rock and blood mortar. It was a repulsive moment of self-awareness, but the actions of the other slaves, particularly the ex-bodyguard and manservant, Pierlo, who he was chained alongside, had alerted him to it.

There had been an incident two work shifts earlier. Was that two days past? Two hours past?

The man Pierlo, Varnus had ascertained, was barely holding a grip on his sanity. He had overheard the man whispering to himself, having one side of a conversation that only he could hear. The living, black module that was attached to his face strangely distorted his voice, making it guttural, thick and oddly muted. In fact, it sounded uncannily like the voices of the cruel overseers. Varnus knew that his voice had undergone a similar change.

As he talked quietly to himself, Varnus had noticed that the man was tenderly stroking the stone beneath him, as if he were petting a beloved family salt hound. It was unnerving, but since he heard voices constantly through the blaring cacophony of the Discords, he thought little of it. At least he had so far resisted the desire to talk back to those voices.

As Pierlo stroked the harsh stone, Varnus had heard a wailing cry and had swung around to see the commotion. A block of stone, one of the millions that made up the growing tower, was being lowered into position, but through some mishap, it had not been positioned correctly. It had crushed the legs of three slave workers and was teetering on the brink of tipping off the high wall. One of the spider-limbed cranes strained as it tried to reposition the stone, but it was clear that it would fall. Pierlo and several other slaves had risen to their feet, crying out in horror, and Varnus felt a pang of anguish and terror.

The stone slipped in the claws of the crane and dropped over the outside edge of the wall, spinning and smashing against the stones below. A hundred tonnes of rock, it tumbled end over end, down and down, before disappearing in the low hanging smog clouds. The men whose legs had been shattered wailed, but not in pain. They clawed their way to the edge of the wall, their legs twisted horrifically beneath them, as they watched the descent of the block, eyes already brimming with tears of loss.

Pierlo had fallen to his knees, crying out to the heavens. Varnus's stomach churned, and he felt such a hollow loss within his chest that he thought he would weep. He shook his head as he realised what he was thinking, but the pain remained. All around the tower, slaves cried out in anguish.

He also knew that this was no doubt some further degradation of his sanity, for how else could he imagine that a construction like this had self-awareness? But of that he was convinced. The tower had been distraught when the stone had fallen and the slaves that had tended it had picked up that emotion. It was the kind of feeling a parent has when its child is in pain but cannot be helped.

He hated the tower, but when the time for the shift change came, he found it difficult to leave. The ride down the rickety, grilled elevator that climbed down the narrow steps of the tower on mechanical spider legs was hard, and the pain of separation was strong, even though it repulsed him. Other slaves cried out and wept openly, pushing their hands out through the grill to touch the stone of the tower, often losing a finger in the process.

Sleep was still no respite for Varnus, as every time he closed his eyes he revisited the hellish landscape of skinned corpses. Only now, there were towering buildings made out of the corpses, huge edifices that reached to the roiling heavens. From these buildings came the tolling of bells and the sound of monotonous chanting. He awoke covered in sweat, and instantly the pain of separation struck him; he longed to be back atop the tower, working.

Discords blared and told him that the tower had a name. They told him that it was a Gehemehnet. He did not know the word, but it felt right.

It seemed to him that the Gehemehnet breathed, and that he could feel the pulse of its massive heart reverberating through the stone beneath his touch.

He prayed to the Emperor when he thought such things, but it was increasingly hard to remember the words of worship that had been drummed into him by the priests of the Ecclesiarchy.

He looked at Pierlo as the man worked, smearing the blood mortar across the stone face. The man's robes had fallen open and there was something underneath, a shape on the man's shoulder that even the lumps of congealed mortar could not hide.

'What's on your shoulder?' he hissed, his voice alien to him.

Pierlo looked up in irritation, as if rudely interrupted mid-conversation. He pulled at his tattered robe, covering up the mark, and continued with his work, head down.

Varnus risked a glance around and saw that there was no overseer anywhere nearby. His mind feverish and the din of the Discord blaring, kill him, Varnus scrambled over to the slave and grabbed at his robe. Pierlo clawed at his hands, trying to fend him off, but Varnus ripped the robe from the man's shoulder.

There was a symbol there on the meat of his shoulder, a symbol that he recognised, for he had seen it hundreds of times every day. It was embossed on the sides of the spider cranes and it was stamped into the foreheads of some of the head overseers. He had seen it on the shoulder plate of every cursed traitor Space Marine on the planet. It was a screaming daemon's face and he knew exactly what it proclaimed.

'You are one of them!' he hissed. Instantly the pieces fell together in his mind. He had seen the man leave the meeting room in the palace just moments before it had exploded. He was one of the traitor insurgents that had aided the forces of Chaos.

Pierlo's face twisted hatefully as the two scuffled. Dully, Varnus heard the yells of other slaves, but he paid them no heed. All he could hear was the pounding of blood in his head. This bastard was one of those who had opened the door to the invaders. Hatred swelled within him. His hand snapped out towards Pierlo's face, fingers spread like claws.

The man was no stranger to unarmed combat and he grabbed Varnus's hand as it came close, twisting his wrist painfully. Pierlo's other hand slammed into his solar plexus, fingers extended, and all the breath was driven from him. He sank to the stone. Where Pierlo was of high birth, and had clearly been trained in the arts of combat, Varnus had learnt how to brawl on the streets of Shinar, and he knew that fighting as an art form and fighting tooth and nail for daily survival were two very different things. Varnus had suffered countless beatings in his youth as a hab-ganger and had dished out far more. Even when he had tried to go straight and had secured a job on the salt plains, he had fought in bare-knuckle brawls at night to supplement his meagre income. All that had changed when he had been recruited into the Shinar enforcers, but his skills had come in just as useful there.

Varnus surged up suddenly, landing a fierce blow to Pierlo's chin, quickly followed by a vicious swinging elbow that connected sharply with the man's head. He reeled backwards, about to fall off the wall and probably drag Varnus and half a dozen other slaves with him. Varnus grabbed the thick, spiked chain, yanking the man back onto the stone and straight into a knee that he slammed into Pierlo's groin.

As Pierlo bent forwards in pain, the ex-enforcer drove the point of his elbow down onto the back of his head, dropping him to the stone. Pierlo was motionless, but Varnus had not finished there. His hatred suffusing him, he made a loop with the spiked chain and hooked it around Pierlo's neck, placing a foot on the back of the man's neck. He crossed the chains in his hands and strained, pulling on the chain with all his strength. Though Pierlo wore the same blood-red metal collar as all the slaves, the chain bit deeply around his throat, cutting off his breathing as the spiked barbs sank into flesh. Blood ran from the man's throat, mixing with the mortar atop the stone.

Pain jolted him as the needles of the overseers plunged into his flesh, but he didn't care. His muscles bulged as he hauled on the chains one final time before the searing pain the overseers delivered made him collapse, twitching and convulsing, to the stone alongside Pierlo.

In his mind's eye he saw the sky running red with blood. He knew that Gehemehnet was pleased.

He smiled as he looked into the dead eyes of the traitor.

The earth shook, and as Marduk ripped his chainsword from the guts of a Guardsman he raised his head to pierce the gloom. Rain still lashed the bloody battlefield, but he sensed, as much as he felt, something approaching, something huge.

Lightning flashed, silhouetting a shape that Marduk had initially mistaken for a mountain. This was no mountain though, for it moved inexorably forwards, and the earth shook as it took another laborious step.

With a curse on his lips, Marduk's gaze rose as the immense shape of the Titan was revealed.

It was like some ancient, primeval god from an antediluvian age that continued to stalk the lands long after its kin had passed into myth and legend.

Its metal hide was pitted and scored by wounds that it had suffered during the battles it had waged over its ten thousand year lifetime. It's leering, dull metal face was fire scorched and scarred, though its eyes still burned with red light. Within that metallic cranium sat the Princeps and his Moderati, psychically linked to the Titan. They felt its pain as their own and experienced savage joy as the behemoth laid waste to everything before it.

Advancing through the press of soldiers and tanks, it dwarfed everything in its path. A multi-towered bastion the size of a walled stronghold sat atop its massive, armoured carapace shell. Siege ordnance and battle cannons, of such size that a small tank could drive through the barrels, were housed within this massive structure, and the pennants and banners that adorned it whipped around in the gale. Scores of symbols were emblazoned on the ancient kill banners that hung from the pair of monstrous main guns that the Imperator Titan wielded in place of arms, marking the enemy Titans and super-heavy vehicles that it had destroyed throughout its long history. The air around the giant war machine shimmered with the power of its void shields.

The siege cannons upon the hulking shoulders of the Imperator thumped as they launched their first salvo, and the air was filled with screaming shells that erupted amongst the Word Bearers. Warrior-brothers were thrown through the air and tanks smashed asunder beneath the barrage, but that was as nothing compared to the awesome destruction that was to come. Super-heated plasma fed into the annihilator cannon on the beast's right arm, filling the air with potent hissing that hurt the unprotected ears of the Guardsmen, and the massive barrels of the deadly hellstorm cannon began to rotate, the wind beating fiercely as it picked up speed.

The hellstorm cannon let loose with a torrent of fire from the spinning barrels that tore along the line of Word Bearers, cutting from one side of the valley to the other, ripping through warriors and vehicles alike. The plasma annihilator cannon flared with the power of a contained sun and a gout of white-hot energy roared from its barrel, engulfing a handful of tanks that were instantly returned to their molten base elements.

The destruction that the Imperator wrought was awe inspiring, and a roar rose from the ranks of Imperial Guardsmen as their god-machine unleashed the power of its weapon systems upon the hated foe.

Marduk bared his sharp teeth, hissing up at the monstrous, unstoppable beast. Stabbing beams of energy flashed from the mountainside as the lascannons of the havoc squads positioned there targeted the Imperator. The powerful blasts looked like little more than pin-pricks of light as they strobed towards the Titan. Scores of predator tanks, Land Raiders, Dreadnoughts and daemon engines added their fire to that of the havoc squads as they directed their heavy weapons fire towards the towering behemoth. Missiles, lascannon beams, heavy ordnance shells and streaming plasma speared towards the Titan. Its void shields flashed as they absorbed the incoming firepower, leaving the deadly machine unscathed, and it returned fire with dozens of battle cannons situated in the leg bastions.

The ranks of the Imperial Guard renewed their attack, bolstered by the arrival of the Titan that unleashed the power of its plasma Annihilator once more, firing up into the darkness and blasting away a ridge top, causing salt rock, debris and daemon engines to crash down the sheer cliff in a mass avalanche. Its hellstorm cannons smoked as they spun, tearing along the ridge. Rain turned to steam as it lashed against the super-heated barrels of the mega-weapon. Barrages of ordnance continued to pound at the void shields atop the carapace of the Titan, and they flashed with a myriad of colours as they deflected the incoming fire.

Marduk swore again and fired into the press of bodies around him, feeling the shifting tide of the battle turn against his Legion. There was just not enough firepower to take down the Imperator's shields, let alone damage the Titan, not while they were already engaged with the Guard and Skitarii forces.

But to fail in their duty to hold the valley was to face a fate far worse than death. If it was necessary, every Word Bearers Space Marine would willingly give his life in this battle at his word. Though it was Kol Badar's place as Coryphaus and strategos to organise the complex, interwoven battle lines, the carefully planned advance, fire support and overlapping fields of fire, it was Marduk's place, in the absence of the Dark Apostle, to be responsible for the Host's spiritual leadership. If he gave the order to stay and fight to the death, for that was what the gods of Chaos wished, then his word would be obeyed without question. The warrior-brothers would sell their lives dearly but willingly, taking as many of the enemy with them as they could, before their own life essences were freed from their earthly forms.

But Marduk could not see how a noble sacrifice could be made against this ancient war god. No, there could be no proud last stand. There would be only death and destruction, swift and ignoble. They would not be able to buy the time that the Dark Apostle needed to complete the construction of the Gehemehnet, and that was paramount. If the building work was interrupted then the whole attack against the planet was rendered pointless, and the Council of Dark Apostles upon Sicarus would be most displeased. That was truly something to be feared, for even in death, the Council would reach into the abyss of the Immaterium and seek out the souls of those who had failed them. The endless torment that they would orchestrate was too horrific to even contemplate.

He felt anger build within him and hacked around in a fury, shattering bones and slicing through flesh as he fought in the rising water. Many of the enemy were wading almost to their stomachs through the fast moving flow, and the corpses of the slain floated face down, their blood leaking out like an oil slick. Another blast from the Imperator obliterated a section of the battlefield with the power of its weaponry, and the whooshing sound of water instantly turning to steam was mixed with the roars of the dying and the detonations of the fuel lines and ammo-banks of vehicles.

'We must pull back, First Acolyte.' Kol Badar growled over the vox.

'The great war leader Kol Badar, ordering a retreat from Imperial Guard,' remarked Marduk. 'I can hear them laughing at us already.'

'Let them laugh. They won't have the chance to savour their victory for long.'

'For them to be able to savour any sort of victory against the Legion of Lorgar shames us all,' snarled Marduk.

'You wish to die here, whelp? I will joyfully oblige you if that is what you truly desire. And nobody will save you this time.'

Burias-Drak'shal cleaved his icon into the chest of a Guardsman, splattering blood across Marduk's helmet.

'The battle is good,' he growled, the thick daemon teeth within his shifting jaw making his speech awkward. He was not privy to the private vox transmissions passing between Kol Badar and Marduk. 'Is this the day to give our lives to Chaos?'

Marduk shook his head at the possessed Icon Bearer and snapped a barbed response to Kol Badar.

'The gods of Chaos would curse you if you dared try, warlord. Your failure mars us all.'

'And I will stand with my head held high before my lord and accept any punishment that he metes out. I would not try to wheedle out of it like you, whelp.'

'You admit your failures then, mighty Kol Badar.'

'I listen not to your spineless taunts, snake. As the gods are my witness, I will see that damned Imperator fall. I am still warlord of the Host, and you will do as I command.'

'I look forward to seeing you grovel and lick the ground at the Dark Apostle's feet as you beg for mercy,' snarled Marduk.

'Never going to happen, snake,' said Kol Badar. The vox-channel clicked as it was opened to the champions of the coteries.

'Fighting fall-back,' ordered the Coryphaus. 'Front coteries detach, third and fourth lines lay cover. Second and fifth lines, intersect with the first, overlap and close out. Third and fourth, then detach. And pull back those damned Dreadnoughts and daemon engines.'

Burias-Drak'shal snarled in frustration, ripping a man in two as he enacted his dissatisfaction.

'We flee from these?' he said as he broke the back of another soldier.

'No,' said Marduk. 'We flee from that.'

'Bah! We have taken down Titans before. The Coryphaus is weak.'

'Eyeing his position already, Burias-Drak'shal?'

The possessed warrior grinned ferally before he allowed the daemon within him to reassert itself, and he was transformed beyond being able to communicate. With a roar of animal power, he launched himself back into the fray.

Marduk felt shame and resentment build within him. It was not the way of the Legion to back off from a battle against the soldiers of the Corpse Emperor, though he knew that Kol Badar's orders were the best path of action for the Host.

Still, it would be a pleasure to see the arrogant bastard taken down a peg when the Dark Apostle received word of the setback.

The Word Bearers' retreat was perfectly executed as the lines of coteries fell back in textbook order, laying down fields of overlapping fire to cover those that backed away. Those coteries in turn then planted their feet and covered their brethren. Fallen warriors were dragged back, for to leave them upon the field of battle would have been a gross sacrilege, and in addition, the war gear and gene-seed of the Legion were far too precious to abandon. Vehicles rolled slowly backwards, firing their weapon systems towards the Titan.

Most of the daemon engines and Dreadnoughts were dragged out of the fighting by massive chains hooked to heavy, tracked machinery, though they fought and struggled to rejoin the fray. Several of them turned against their minders, killing dozens of the black-robed humans that strained to rein them in, and tipping over several of the heavy vehicles hauling them backwards. Others ripped free of their restraints and launched at the foe, ripping, tearing and roaring, flames and missiles streaming from their weapons before they were inevitably silenced by the guns of the Imperator.

Kol Badar felt the shame tear at him, but he could not allow the Host to be destroyed. The losses had been high, however, and this day would long be lamented.

He had of course made preparations for a fall-back if it was needed, it was just part of the canon of engagement to be ready for any eventuality, but to order a retreat was not something that he had been forced to do for millennia.

With withering, concentrated fire, the Word Bearers drove the enemy back. The Legion slowly retreated, their bolters creating a swathe of death.

Ground-hugging, eight-legged machines skittered forward from the Chaos Space Marine lines. They were smaller than the towering defilers, and operated by beings that had once been lowly humans. Now they were forever linked to the machines through mechanical hard-wiring and black sorcery, the corrupted flesh of their bodies contained within domed, liquid-filled, blister-like eyes at the front of the constructions.

The bloated abdomens of the machines pulsed as circular mines were excreted from their rears, jabbed downwards through the water and into the earth. They scuttled forward, their oversized bellies shrinking as they laid their deadly cargos just beneath the crust of the hard packed salt rock, placing thousands of the mines across the entire breadth of the valley.

Other, longer legged constructions strode through the deepening water, like perverted, multi-limbed water fowl. They liberally spewed a thick, glutinous, oily liquid across the top of the water flows, spurting it out past the Word Bearers that backed away, out into the no man's land between the two forces.

The Imperials' fire destroyed dozens of the twisted creatures, and entire sections of the valley were still exploding beneath the horrendous force of the Imperator's weaponry, but they were disposable and Kol Badar did not care that they were destroyed. They were performing their allotted tasks and their destruction was of no consequence.

The Titan took another massive step forwards, the huge, multi-tiered metal foot slamming down with thundering force, firing its weapon systems at the retreating Word Bearers. Battle cannons atop the Titan's carapace turned, tracking the Thunderhawks and Stormbirds as they screamed through the storm, veering out towards the ridge-tops.

The words of the First Acolyte rang in his head and his anger grew. Such a victory for the Imperials should never have come to pass and he felt frustration weigh heavily upon his massive shoulders. He had wanted more time to scout out the enemy, to assess its strength and composition, but the Dark Apostle's wishes had been clear, and time had been a critical factor. To properly evaluate the enemy would have meant facing the foe deeper in the mountains, and he had felt that such a strategy would not have been to the Dark Apostle's liking.

'You are too cautious, my Coryphaus.' Jarulek would have said. He had insinuated it before.

His caution would have spared the lives of many warrior-brothers this day, however, for the arrival of the Titan had been an unexpected shock. And now, he was forced to fight a retreat.

Still, he would damn well ensure that the enemy took as many casualties as possible during the Host's withdrawal.

As flames and shrapnel fell upon the thick, oily soup spewed forth by the twisted, long-legged walkers, the valley erupted into tall flames. Burning fiercely, they roared across the entire width of the valley, engulfing dozens of the walkers. They squealed horribly as they perished, legs kicking in agony as flames licked at them. The burning liquid gruel had covered hundreds of mindless Skitarii as they had continued their relentless advance after the retreating Chaos Space Marines, and the flames dissolved their flesh as they marched. Pieces of machinery, having lost the flesh that bound them together, slipped beneath the streaming waters, though they continued to burn, even beneath the surface.

The first tanks reached the mines secreted beneath the salt rock and were thrown into the air as the powerful weapons detonated. Having seen their power, the Imperials would be loathe to continue their advance until minesweepers had been brought forward to clear a path, and the princeps of the Imperator Titan would have no wish to risk his colossal war machine.

He had bought the Legion time, but it was time that he would have to use carefully, to plan and plot the demise of the Imperator Titan. Strategies and ploys were already swimming through his mind. He knew the place where he would face it, having already noted, on his flyover, the narrowing of the valley some five kilometres back.

He raised his bitter gaze to the heavens that were being ripped apart by lightning and falling shells, and repeated the oath he had sworn to the First Acolyte.

'I will see that god-machine fall by my hand,' he swore, 'or may my soul be damned to torment for all eternity.'

Thunder boomed overhead, as if in response to his oath.

He would break the machine-spirit of the beast, and once victory had been achieved, he would stand before Jarulek, the Dark Apostle, and accept whatever punishment he deemed suitable for his failures this day.

The battle was long over, and the intense storm overhead had abated. The waters had receded, flowing further down the mountains, leaving a mire of destruction across the valley. Bodies were strewn all across the battlefield, and burned out vehicles and wrecks scattered the field. Few enemy casualties remained, most having been hauled from the fire-fight, though Elysians wielding flamers torched those that were left behind. All avoided the blackened hulls of the enemy vehicles and cursed engines, for to destroy them utterly would be too labour intensive. Teams of Elysians bearing heavy arrays of detection sensors inched forward, removing thousands of landmines from the ground. They were far slower than the bizarre minesweeper vehicles of the Adeptus Mechanicus that fanned the ground with great sweeps of mechanical analysis arms. But the orders of the Elysian command were clear: the army would advance as quickly as possible, and every man equipped to detect the mines, whether Elysian or mindless servitor, would be employed.

Under the shadow of the stationary Imperator class Titan Exemplis, the adepts of the Mechanicus swarmed over wrecked Imperial vehicles, salvaging precious machineries and supplicating the dead or dying spirits of the vehicles. To Brigadier-General Havorn, they looked like nothing more than clusters of carnivorous ants tearing apart the carcasses of dying prey. The adepts swiftly stripped weapon systems from tanks and Ordinatus Minoris crawlers with focused energy, and loaded them alongside working engines, track-works and control systems onto the backs of hulking hauler vehicles for reuse.

Industrious servitors worked tirelessly, hefting heavy pieces of equipment with servo-arms and harnesses under the watchful eyes of the adepts, and the fallen Skitarii were likewise gathered up and taken to rolling factories that followed in the wake of the main army. There they were dropped onto mass conveyer belts and taken inside for recycling. Havorn was unsure what that entailed. He imagined that the weapons of the tech-guard warriors were torn from the dead flesh of their hosts, but he did not know the fate of the dead flesh. Only when the Techno-Magos Darioq had made a cold entreaty to him had he learnt what happened to those desecrated bodies.

'A request, Brigadier-General Ishmael Havorn,' said the techno-magos in his monotone voice. 'It is my understanding that the flesh bodies of your inactive soldiers are being gathered. Are they to be taken to the reprocessing factorum units of your regiment? I was not aware of the presence of such facilities within your expedition force.'

'Tokens of Elysia will be placed upon the eyes of my fallen soldiers and their flesh will be consumed with cleansing flame. The priests will guide their souls on their way to the Emperor's side,' replied Havorn, unsure of what the techno-magos spoke. 'It is the way of the Elysians. Each man carries with him his twin tokens of Elysia,' he explained, reaching beneath his robe and jangling a pair of round metal coins that hung around his neck, a fine chain running through the holes in their centres. 'This has long been the custom of my people. We specialise in drop attacks, and it is seldom possible to extract our dead, but it matters not where the body lies, merely that the spirit is guided on its way.'

'The dead flesh husks are burned? That is illogical. It is a waste of resources, both of promethium and of the flesh husks. And what of your flesh units that have been rendered inoperative but not yet fully nonfunctional?'

'My wounded, you mean?' asked Havorn, his voice icy.

'If you wish.'

'My wounded soldiers are removed from their platoons and taken to the medicae facilities within my mass transport-landers. Those with fatal wounds are comforted as much as possible before their spirits are guided on their way.'

'I would make a request of you, Brigadier-General Ishmael Havorn.'

'Ask away,' said the Imperial commander, though he felt wary, not knowing where the magos was leading.

'It is illogical and irrational to dispose of your nonfunctional flesh units as you do. I would ask that upon the conclusion of your priestly rituals, that the flesh husks are collected for reprocessing by my adepts.'

'Reprocessing into what?'

'Into a semi-liquid, protein based nutrient paste.'

Havorn blinked as if he could not possibly have heard correctly.

'You… you wish to turn the bodies of honoured Elysian soldiers who have fallen in battle against the enemy into paste.'

'It is a logical use of limited resources. My Skitarii cohorts are well fuelled, but a replenishment of feed levels would be advantageous.'

'There really is not an ounce of humanity left in you is there, you wretched, base machine?' said Havorn, his voice trembling with emotion.

'Correction. There are exactly thirty-eight Imperial weight units of living flesh and tissue upon my frame, Brigadier-General Ishmael Havorn. I am neither wretched nor base, although their usage in such a context is a new piece of data memory to be stored. And I thank you for calling me "machine", though I am not yet so fully esteemed within the priesthood of Mars as to become truly one with the Omnissiah.'

'Your answer, magos,' said Havorn, 'is that you can go and burn in hell before I hand over any of my soldiers to you, dead or alive.'

Seeing no immediate response forthcoming from the magos, he added, 'That means no, you cold-hearted bastard.'

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

'We have identified the location from which the enemy has chosen to face us, brigadier-general,' said Colonel Laron.

'Show me,' said Havorn. The large table between the pair lit up at Havorn's word, thousands of twisting green lines of light springing up to show a detailed schematic map of the surrounding area. At Havorn's instruction, the crouching servitor built into the table's base manipulated the rendered image, scrolling it across the surface of the table and zooming in on valleys and ravines. At another word, the densely packed lines began to rise above the table, giving a three dimensional view of the mountains.

Taking a moment to study the detailed map, Laron pointed.

"We advance along this main valley bed here. Our scouts move along the ravines here, here and here,' he said, indicating two thin valleys a few kilometres away from where the main force advanced. 'And our drop-troopers have landed at these points,' he said, picking out a dozen key, strategic high points.

'As you have read in my reports, our attacks to take the high lands up to here,' he said, indicating, 'have been fierce, but a success.'

'The enemy has defended them half-heartedly,' said Havorn. 'Your men took them too easily, and I mean no slur upon them. When they choose their place to stand and fight, then they will face far stiffer competition.'

'My sentiment exactly, brigadier-general, and I believe we have found that place. Early forays to take these points here,' he said, indicating the ridges some ten kilometres into a particularly thin stretch of the valley, 'show high concentrations of the enemy. Our attacks have been rebuffed.'

'And with high casualties, I see,' growled Havorn.

'Indeed, the enemy will not budge. That is where they will make their stand.'

'It is a good place for it. The twisting valley is at its narrowest there. There is not a straight line of fire longer than a kilometre, rendering our ordnance of limited use, but their warriors will excel. It means that the Exemplis will have to get close to them to engage, rather than blasting them from five clicks out. It is a cunning place to make their stand. But it could be a ruse. Have you scouted for ambush points ahead of this position?'

'I have, brigadier-general. The valley thins some ten kilometres further up, here. It shrinks to a width of less than a hundred metres at several points; that's a tight fit for the Imperator. That would be the place to launch an ambush, but there are more than forty places where the valley contracts in such a way.'

The brigadier-general grunted.

'Any sign of enemy movement? If we walked into that valley and the enemy had control of those ridges, we would suffer heavy casualties.'

'None, sir. I have sentinels scouring the region, but they have engaged nothing more than cultist outrider vermin that were skulking parallel to the valley. They were all slain.'

'The enemy commander is no fool. If I were him, I would plan something here,' said Havorn, pointing towards one of the narrower areas of the valley. 'The minesweepers have found nothing as yet?'

'No dedicated minefield, only mines scattered every hundred metres or so.'

The Imperial forces had been slowed to a crawl behind the sweeper units. Though no further minefields had been discovered, the traitors had placed sporadic patches of mines down, just enough to force the Imperials into scanning their entire advance.

A series of cracks riddles the cliff faces all along this stretch. 'I have ordered flame units to advance along the cliff walls and cleanse any cave systems. Scanner teams are accompanying the flame units, sweeping the area for life-signs and power outputs.'

'Order demolition teams to cave in the larger crevices,' said Havorn.

'Yes, sir.'

'They will wish to wipe the history books clear of the shame they were dealt at the hands of the Exemplis,' said Havorn. 'They may well have chosen this place to make their stand against us. If that is so, they will fight to the last.'

Keen auto-sensors alerted Kol Badar to the questing machine-spirit of an enemy auspex, and the last systems of his Terminator armour were automatically shut down. He was barely breathing, and his twin hearts beat but once per minute. He had long ago shut off his air-recycling units, and the massive weight of his armour hung upon him as the last of the servos were deactivated.

Dully he heard the muffled thump of detonations, and dust and rock crumbled down upon him as the ground beneath his feet rumbled. Heavier chunks of salt stone broke upon him, but still he stood immobile in his state of semi-suspended animation. It was not the deep slumber that the Legion was capable of, for that would require the attentions of the chirurgeons to reawaken him, and would not allow him to remain at least partially alert for the signal that his prey was near. It was however a deep enough state that any auspex sweep of the enemy should not detect his life signals, particularly while he was shielded behind the thick, insulating plates of his sacred armour.

An indeterminable amount of time passed, and flames washed over him. His heartbeat increased as he registered the brightness of the promethium-based conflagration lapping over him and the sharp rise in temperature. The heat was almost unbearable, the inbuilt heat regulators of the suit having been shut down along with all its other functions, so as not to give off any tell-tale signs of radiation.

The flames lit up the narrow cavern brightly. He could see other members of the cult of the Anointed, immobile as he was, flames licking at them. He saw the external ribbed piping of one warrior-brother's early mark Terminator suit flare brightly as it melted, and the warrior pitched backwards to the cavern floor, his lungs undoubtedly on fire. Kol Badar was pleased to see that he did not cry out as he perished.

As his breathing became more regular in conjunction with the quickening beat of his heart, he began to use too much oxygen, and there was not a lot of that remaining in his suit. He settled his breathing and his heart slowed until once again it almost stopped.

'What was that? You picking something up?' asked the weary Elysian trooper, looking back at his companion. The half-sphere of the heavy auspex disc was a weight in his arms. Trust him to get stuck doing the lifting rather than the easy job of keeping an eye on the data-screen on the attached feedback unit.

'I thought there was something for a second, but its gone now. Must have been a glitch.'

'Time for us to swap, eh?' he said hopefully. His team member laughed out loud.

'Not a chance. You lost, fair and square. Come on, let's move on. There's nothing here.'

Kol Badar's consciousness was roused as the cavern shook and crumbling salt dust dropped down upon him. There was a pause of almost thirty seconds before there was another booming sound like thunder, closer than the first, and more dust rained down. His yellow eyes flickered and he powered up his suit's basic functions. He reasoned that after the enemy had swept the area and declared it clear there would be little in the way of further scans, so powering up his Terminator armour was but a slight risk. Air began to circulate once more, stale and dry, and he breathed in deeply flooding his oxygen starved body. His senses came instantly to their full capacity.

His prey was near.

He took in his surroundings, turning his head from side to side as he familiarised himself once more with his situation as his suit's diagnostics ran. The cavern was cramped and demolitions had caused cave-ins in several places, where chunks of rock lay strewn across the uneven floor. Massive blocks leant against several of the Anointed and parts of their blessed ceramite were chipped and dented. Many of his brethren were half-buried beneath the collapse, but it mattered not.

The cavern branched off a deep chasm that split the cliff face of the main valley. He had seen the narrowing of the valley and noted its suitability as a place to face the enemy, but he would never have discovered this cave system in the limited time that he had to prepare the ambush. One of the cultists had brought it to the attention of the Chaos Marines, one of the wretched dogs that doted on the First Acolyte.

Branching off the sheer-faced chasm, the entrance to the cave system was hidden from view, and unless someone knew of its location it would be nigh on impossible to discover. Still, the flames of the enemy's weaponry had found the entrance, even if their bearers had not, and his armoured suit was blackened from the blasts of blazing promethium.

The demolitions that had followed had completely caved in the chasm as the seismic charges shook down rock from above. No exit from the cavern could be accessed by a warrior in Terminator armour. But if the enemy became complacent because they believed their flanks were secure, then all the better.

There was another booming sound and the ground shook. Though the area was most likely not being scanned, it would be too much of a risk to chance vox communication. The First Acolyte whelp should be moving the cultists forwards. If he mistimed the advance, the Anointed would be left terribly exposed to the guns of the cursed enemy. He ground his teeth. Were the whelp to fail in his duty, he and his brethren would almost certainly be annihilated. Not even the upstart Marduk would knowingly leave the Anointed to perish, though he was certain the thought had crossed the bastard's mind.

Still, this was the only chance the Legion had of destroying the Imperator class Titan without the loss of hundreds of warrior-brothers. It was a risky venture, but Kol Badar found a glimmer of excitement at the prospect. He had thought that such battle hunger was long lost to him, faded over the great expanse of time he had been fighting for the glory of Lorgar. He welcomed the feeling like a long-lost comrade.

Dozens of sharp, red lights began to flash against the cavern wall as the ground once again rumbled beneath him. The shifting of rock caused another avalanche of stone and dust to fall, and Kol Badar smirked as he realised that there was every chance that the whole cavern might cave in at any moment, trapping him and his warriors beneath thousands of tonnes of mountain. That would be an inglorious death indeed, and he could just imagine the derision that would be heaped upon him by the bastard Marduk if such a fate was his destiny.

There was yet another crashing impact nearby. He estimated its distance. It was difficult to determine, but he judged that after two more impacts, it would be time to detonate the impact charges.

The red lights of the charges blinked rhythmically in the darkness. They were designed to explode outwards in one direction only, and he had organised their placement carefully. An expert in siege demolitions, he had spent several hours studying the fault lines and angled layers of the rock face so that the powerful explosives would have the desired effect. Just one misplaced charge would bring the mountainside down upon them, and he would allow his fate to be determined by none but himself.

With his savage anticipation building, Kol Badar listened for the heavy impacts that would signal the launch of the ambush.

The command Chimera rambled forward slowly in the shadow of the Exemplis. No matter how many Titans Brigadier-General Havorn had seen, he was still awed by the sheer scale of them, and this, an Imperator class no less, was amongst the largest Titans ever constructed. From his position in the cupola of his Chimera, he had a good view of the massive war machine as it strode forward. He could understand why the twisted adepts of the Mechanicus worshipped it as an avatar of their god, for it was a powerful, primal thing of epic proportions.

From behind, he could see many of the oiled workings of the god-machine, as its rear was not as well armoured as its front. Pistons the size of buildings rose and fell as the behemoth lifted its huge, bastion legs, and eddies of super-heated smoke and steam blasted from the exhausts in its back. Higher still, pennants were whipped by the bustling breeze atop the arched architecture of the fortress that the Titan bore upon its massive shoulders. Battle cannons and siege ordnance was housed there, along with temple shrines to the Machine-God and mausoleums that held the remains of past princeps.

The narrowness of the ravine made him tense and uneasy. It was more like a chasm than a valley, the sides sheer and close. They seemed to loom in threateningly, and if the enemy moved onto those ridges, they would be able to rain fire down upon the convoy with impunity. Still, Laron's 72nd held those regions and were pushing forwards along the ridge tops ranging out ahead. The point of the Mechanicus forces was moving forward slowly through the ravine and it seemed that the enemy were content to wait for them up ahead. Still, he half expected something to happen, some ploy to be launched, and he had learnt long ago to trust his instincts.

'Rachius,' he called down into the Chimera, 'run another sweep.'

'In progress, sir,' said his communications officer.

The Chimera was outfitted with an array of sensors and powerful vox-units to allow the brigadier-general's commands to be conveyed to his captains, and tall aerials and dishes rose from the rear of the APC.

'I'm picking up faint radiation from the cliff face, sir. The exact position is unclear.'

'Damn it!' he said. He felt his tension rise. This was the critical moment. The diminishing width of the pass had forced the Imperial regiments to spread out in a long, unwieldy convoy. If an attack was launched it would be difficult to bring up support and the rest of the regiments behind would grind to a standstill.

'From the cliff face you say? The demolition teams didn't leave any chasms clear, did they Rachius?'

'No, sir. My reports say that all were collapsed. Could just be geothermals.'

'Try to pinpoint the location. And order the Chimeras to close formation. Tell the commanders to be ready for action.'

The hyperefficient officer swiftly carried out his orders. Donal Rachius was a fastidious man, utterly fixated on his appearance. A crease in his uniform upset him, and he was exact and precise in everything he did. Havorn tolerated his eccentricities because the man was exceptional and his perfectionism, though irritating on a personal level, made him ideal for his role.

The Chimeras behind his command tank revved their engines and advanced, drawing level with his own. There was not room in the ravine for even twenty of the vehicles to advance alongside one another. Still, they kept a wary distance from the Titan. One descending foot of that monster would easily crush a tank flat.

When the attack came, it was almost a relief. But it came at the front of the armoured column, the strongest point in the Imperial line.

He heard scattered bombardments up ahead and saw the column slow.

Instantly, Havorn dropped his lanky frame down through the cupola, swinging his legs around beneath him as the powered semi-lift lowered into the Chimera proper. It was cramped with communications equipment, a small team of officers and a very large ogryn hunched in a specially constructed bucket seat, his head stooped but still pressed against the roof.

'Report,' he ordered.

'The techno-magos informs us that his Skitarii units have engaged the foe.'

'What, the enemy has advanced to meet us?'

'It would seem so, sir. They have rounded the bend here,' said Rachius, pointing to a data-slate with a simplified overhead map that glimmered with points of light that indicated troop formations.

'But that makes no sense. They will be butchered without the support of their bigger guns, which are all positioned back here, are they not?' replied Havorn, pointing along the ridge tops some kilometres around the bend in the ravine.

'They are. We have received no intelligence to indicate otherwise.'

'They want us to engage, halting the column.'

'The Mechanicus have already halted, sir. The Exemplis is readying its weaponry.'

'Tell the magos to advance. Tell him his god-machine is in danger,' said Havorn as he climbed once again into the cupola to survey the situation.

He raised the hatch of the Chimera to see the Titan's legs planted firmly, and support pinions locking into place as it readied its weapons. The air was charged with power as its plasma reactors burned hot, making ready to unleash a fusillade of destruction. He lifted a pair of long-range crys-scopes to his eyes, scanning along the cliff walls ahead. There was nothing there, no entrance from which a hidden force could emerge.

'We have enemy movement, sir! They are pushing forward along the ridges! And more of the enemy are moving along the ravine at pace! They are moving for a full attack!'

What the hell are they doing? thought Havorn. They will be slaughtered in their droves by the massive guns of the Exemplis. Still, this new development gave him no comfort and his unease rose.

'Forward!' roared Marduk. 'The eyes of the gods are upon you and their judgement awaits. Prove your worth before them, and take your hatred to the infidel corpse worshippers!'

The cultists advanced before his fiery oratory, but Marduk despised them, every one of them. The gods were watching, it was true, and they would laugh as these wretches were led to the slaughter to accomplish the goal of the true favoured ones, the Word Bearers.

'Onward, warriors of the true gods! Glory and ascension awaits you! Fear not the guns of the enemy. Embrace destruction, for with your deaths the aims of the gods are accomplished. Give up your mortal bodies unto Chaos, and your souls will soar in the realms of the deities this night!'

Five thousand cult warriors advanced into the tight ravine, towards the waiting guns of the looming Titan in the distance. They screamed their devotion as they marched forward.

Leaving a considerable gap behind the Cultists of the Word, Marduk ordered the remainder of the Host forward, giving up on any further pretence that they were going to wait for the enemy to come to them.

He saw the Imperator Titan plant its feet as the cultists drew within range of its weaponry, just as Kol Badar had predicted. Now was the time for the Coryphaus to act. His gambit needed to work, else the entire Host would be at the mercy of the Titan's guns.

'I still think we should have held back,' snarled Burias. 'Let that bastard Kol Badar face the enemy alone and blast him back to hell.'

'Burias,' laughed Marduk, 'your choler is in the ascendant. You speak these words because you believe they are what I wish to hear?'

'A statement of my feelings, First Acolyte, nothing more. The bastard ordered a retreat against the foe. He deserves death.'

'Maybe, my Icon Bearer, but you would have us abandon the Anointed?'

'The Anointed are Kol Badar's pets. They worship him with nearly as much fervour as they worship the Dark Apostle.'

'And you are bitter at having not been indoctrinated into the cult,' said Marduk. The Icon Bearer made no reaction, save a slight tension in the muscles of his neck, which Marduk observed. He laughed.

'You are an ambitious, black-hearted one, aren't you, dear Burias. And you hold some resentment towards me, is it not true?'

'First Acolyte?' asked Burias in a slightly hurt tone. 'I am your devoted warrior, always.'

'But you blame me for your not having been embraced into the cult of the Anointed. You think it is a subtle insult directed at me from Kol Badar, an insult that you must pay the price for because of our comradeship.'

'The thought… had crossed my mind, First Acolyte.'

'It pleases me that you can at times be honest, Burias,' said Marduk lightly. Before the Icon Bearer could respond, he continued, 'Is it the lure of Slaanesh, your endless desire to raise yourself, to better yourself?'

'It is not perfection I seek, First Acolyte, as you know. I don't need perfection to attain that which I desire.'

'No, you just need to be on the good side of one who would become a Dark Apostle. Do not become complacent, dear Burias. When the time comes for me to take on the mantle of that position, I will choose only the most suitable warrior to become my Coryphaus.'

'My suitability is in doubt?' questioned Burias, trying to keep his pristine, handsome, pale face devoid of emotion, but Marduk saw a flash of Drak'shal's fury in his eyes.

'No, Burias, but nothing beneath the gaze of the gods is certain. Do not allow your hubris to one day shame you.'

'Nothing will bring shame upon me, just as I will never bring shame upon the blessed Legion of Lorgar,' said Burias severely.

Marduk smiled and placed his hand upon the Icon Bearer's shoulder.

'I believe you may be right, Burias, old friend. You said the same words on Calth while we battled the cursed warriors of Guilliman.'

'And you said that one day you would lead one of the grand companies, with me at your side,' said Burias.

'That is true.'

'If this… trick of Kol Badar's goes badly, then there will be too few warriors within the Host to justify splitting it, as the council on Sicarus ordered, especially after the casualties we suffered against the Titan. There will be little need for a second Dark Apostle.'

'That thought had crossed my mind,' snarled Marduk, his mood darkening. 'Regardless, one way or another, I will become a Dark Apostle.'

'Always I have fought at your side, First Acolyte, long before I called you such. And I will fight there, always, whatever may come.'

Marduk placed a hand upon Burias's shoulder.

'I would expect nothing less of you, my friend. Now, order the last of the Host to advance. We fight them here, and pray to the gods that Kol Badar succeeds, else we will all be slaughtered and seeing them sooner than expected.'

'What if it is the will of the gods for us to die here, First Acolyte?'

'Then it is their will, but that is not what I have foreseen. The twisting paths of the future are never set, but of the thousands of coiling threads that I have followed in my dream visions, we were slaughtered here in less than half of them.'

'That is of… great comfort, First Acolyte,' said Burias dryly.

Marduk laughed again, his black mood evaporating in the blink of an eye.

In the distance, the Titan's guns flared brightly as they were unleashed, followed half a second later by the cacophony of the barrage as it echoed up the narrow ravine. Hundreds of cultists were instantly slain in the devastation. The timing for the Word Bearers' advance was critical. If Kol Badar timed it wrong, it would result in the destruction of hundreds of the Legion's warriors. If he timed it just right, then the slaughter of the enemy would be great.

Gods of the Ether guide me, he prayed, and he closed his eyes. A waking vision assailed him the instant he closed his eyes, the image sharp and painful, leaving a dull ache in his temples. He wiped a droplet of blood from his nose and watched as it instantly congealed to a dried crust upon his finger. He would need to discuss this vision with the Warmonger at battle's end, for its meaning was obscure and disturbing.

'Come,' he said, 'let us release our anger upon the foe.'

'I've got a lock, sir!' shouted Rachius. 'Emperor damn them, there are more than fifty of the bastards in there! Vector 7.342.'

Havorn swore and swung his crys-scopes around towards the location that Rachius had indicated. 'Get the Chimeras moving,' he shouted, but the words were lost as a series of detonations ripped apart the mountainside, rocks exploding outwards spectacularly. One sizeable chunk of rock smashed onto the front of his Chimera, denting the thick armoured plate, and others smashed harmlessly against one of the massive feet of the Exemplis, no more than thirty metres from the explosion. At such a range its void shields were useless. They were only effective from a certain distance, and anything within them would be able to attack the god-machine directly.

With this thought running through his mind, he swore again and slammed his fist down onto the top of the Chimera as he saw the dark shapes emerging from the cloud of dust surrounding the point of the explosion.

Clattering gunfire erupted from weaponry as the figures stamped heavily through the rubble. They were huge individuals, their armour plate thick and nigh on impervious to harm: Terminators, the enemy's elite.

Havorn banged on the top of the Chimera.

'Go!' he shouted. 'Intercept them! And get some heavy support over here now!'

The engine of the APC roared as the tank surged forward over the hard packed earth. The other Chimeras were already heading towards the foe, and Havorn saw one of them explode, oily, black smoke rising sharply above the orange conflagration.

'Sir, you should come down here,' said Rachius from below, concern in his voice, but Havorn ignored him, instead grabbing the pistol-grip of the pintle-mounted storm bolter. He swung the powerful weapon in the direction of the Terminators and squeezed the trigger.

Kol Badar roared as his combi-bolter barked fire at the enemy. He was in the middle of the foe's colonnade, surrounded, and he saw vehicles and soldiers rushing towards him from left and right. But the true target of his wrath stood before him: the massive Imperator Titan.

Grand steps descended from arched gateways upon the foot of the immense war machine, and he strode towards them. Covering fire from reaper autocannons swept across the approaching vehicles and Skitarii units, and raking fire tore down the enemy infantry that ran across the salt packed rock to intercept their progress.

Nothing would keep Kol Badar from his target, however, and he strode relentlessly forward through the increasing weight of incoming fire, driven on by steely determination and anger. The defensive batteries built into the Titan's leg bastion unleashed their wrath, engulfing the advancing Anointed, ripping through even mighty Terminator armour with the force of their detonations. Air bursting shells exploded overhead, scattering red-hot, scything shards of shrapnel down onto the warrior-brothers and Kol Badar hissed as a shard the length of a man's hand slammed into his helmet, cutting through his armour and piercing one of his eyes. Blood welled and congealed in the wound and he broke off the end of the piece of red-hot shrapnel with a swat of his power talon, leaving the tip embedded in his eye.

Such a wound would not keep him from his prize and he roared wordlessly as he continued his relentless advance.

Arched doors ten metres up the Titan's foot were thrown open and Skitarii warriors stepped out onto the steps, firing their inbuilt heavy weapons down into the terminators. Kol Badar aimed his combi-bolter into the throng of the enemy and strode on.

Enemy Chimeras screeched to a halt and blue-grey armoured Guardsmen emerged, firing their lasguns into the mass of Terminators. Bolter fire ripped through the soft targets and heavy flamers roared as they engulfed swathes of them in deadly infernos. Combi-meltas hissed as they targeted incoming vehicles, and tanks were rendered into burning shells as they detonated, their crews screaming in pain as they died.

A Chimera with arrays of aerials caught the Coryphaus's eye and he recognised it as belonging to an officer of high rank.

'Take it down,' he ordered. Reaper autocannons swung around, spraying bullets from their twin barrels.

Bolter shells struck Kol Badar, knocking him back a step, and he snarled and squeezed a burst of fire from his combi-bolter at the figure manning the pintle-mounted weapon, forcing him to duck back into the Chimera. He swung his heavy head back towards the target. Only twenty metres now. The Skitarii spilled steadily down off the steps of the Titan's foot as more emerged and others advanced around from the limb's three further assault ramps.

'Keep on the target!' he roared, knowing that if the Anointed were held for too long, the Titan would simply walk away, leaving them horribly exposed.

The Skitarii marched straight into the advancing clump of Terminator-armoured warriors, attempting to keep them away from their charge through sheer weight of numbers and the power of their guns. The steps were packed with the enemy and they unleashed a storm of fire upon the Anointed, each tech-warrior firing over the heads of their companions as they stepped slowly forwards.

Rotating cannons tore through more of the Word Bearers, ripping through ancient plasteel plating and flensing flesh from bone.

High above, steam and smoke was expelled sharply from pistons and locking mechanisms ground as they were released. Kol Badar recognised the signs of the Titan preparing to move.

With a roar he smashed into the ranks of Skitarii, battering them out of his path with sweeps of his power claw and ripping through them with his combi-bolter on full-auto.

'Forward, Anointed! For the glory of Lorgar!'

The Chimera slewed to the side as it took heavy incoming fire and one of its tracks was ripped to tatters. Armour piercing rounds tore through the shell of the APC and two officers within slumped in their seats, their blood splashing the interior. Havorn slammed his fist onto the glowing rune-plate and the release valves of the assault hatch hissed as the ramp swung down. He was exiting the Chimera even as the ramp was still falling and he flicked his plasma pistol into life.

'Sir, let us at least take the lead, since you seem set on this course,' said Rachius in his concerned voice.

Havorn's ogryn bodyguard emerged from the confines of the Chimera and breathed deeply, its eyes narrowing. It stepped protectively in front of the brigadier-general, shielding him from fire with its muscled bulk.

'We must stop the enemies from reaching the Titan! Why in the Emperor's name hasn't it moved yet?' Havorn shouted.

'Our units are converging on them, sir. You do not need to enter the battle!'

'They are coming too slowly,' shouted Havorn. 'We move, now!'

With that, the Elysian commander pointed the way and the ogryn began loping towards the enemy who were climbing the stairs on the Titan's leg battlement.

They were too late, Havorn thought. The Terminators were already past them and his body was old and slow. He cursed the debilities of age and pushed himself on. Fallen Elysians and Skitarii lay strewn across the ground, as well as the occasional bulky form of a fallen enemy. Few of them were truly dead and they lashed out, grabbing and killing any foe within their reach. Even at the point of death they were more than a match for a Guardsman.

The ogryn raised its heavy ripper gun, a thick finger pulling the trigger. Empty shells scattered in its wake. It did not roar or bellow as it charged. Such base, animalistic behaviours had been erased from its simple brainpan, but no amount of augmetics could improve the aim of the ogryn and the bullets from its ripper gun sprayed the area, hitting nothing.

Havorn snapped off a shot with his pistol, the streaming blue-white bolt of plasma dropping one of the Terminators.

Bolter fire raked towards him, striking the hulking abhuman, who grimaced in pain. Chunks of flesh were torn from its arms and chest, but the three metre creature that dwarfed even the Terminators did not slow. It lowered a shoulder and smashed into one of the enemy, knocking it from its feet. Raising the butt of its heavy ripper gun, the ogryn began caving in the helmet of the fallen warrior, smashing it down onto the prone traitor again and again.

Skitarii and Guardsmen were all around Havorn, filling the air with las-fire and high-velocity bolts. The traitors were on the steps and held a tight defensive formation. More than half of the bastards had been taken down, most from the devastation wrought by the Titan's cannons and the powerful weaponry of the elite tech-guard warriors. It would be but moments before they breached the blast doors that led into the Titan.

'Take them down, men of Elysia!' he hollered, his steely, field parade voice carrying over the din of battle.

Suddenly, victory was snatched away as the Titan raised its massive foot high up into the air, carrying with it the traitor Terminators and hundreds of tech-guard warriors still fighting upon the steps. Many of them were knocked off as the Exemplis raised its leg, falling ten metres to the valley floor as the foot was raised higher and higher.

'Damn it!' swore Havorn.

'We are through, Lord Coryphaus,' reported one his Anointed brethren. The chainfists had made short work of the blast doors that had sealed the entrance to the leg bastion, carving through the thick metal with a minimum of fuss.

'Into the breach!' roared Kol Badar as he crushed the augmented, semi-mechanical skull of a Skitarii warrior and hurled it over the edge as the Titan's leg continued to rise. At his command, the Anointed entered the Imperator class Titan.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Flames roared up the spiralling metal staircase, clearing the way. Two abreast, the Terminators had been climbing for what seemed like an age, assailed from above and below by an apparently never-ending stream of Skitarii warriors. Inbuilt defence turrets were stationed at every second level, their hard-wired servitor controllers built into the heavy wall panels of the interior staircase, and they swung their weaponry upon the intruders, filling the cloying, hot air with shells and gunsmoke.

It was hard going, the Word Bearers forced to fight for every step of the mammoth climb up the interior of the Titan's lower leg. Kol Badar's destroyed eye, still with the shrapnel shard jutting from the socket, was throbbing in his head, but he pushed the sensation away as he stamped up the heavy, grilled stairway, blazing away with his combi-bolter.

He was at the front of the line of Terminators, the heavy-flamer wielding Anointed warrior Bokkar at his side. Between the flames of his comrade and the bolts of his combi-weapon, few of the Skitarii could stand against them. Those few that survived were ripped apart by the warlord's power claws and hurled over the railing to fall down the open expanse in the centre of the spiralling stairwell to join a growing pile of sparking, shattered corpses.

The resistance from above slackened. Clearly the last of the Skitarii had been neutralised, leaving just the inbuilt, servitor-guided sentry guns to hamper their progress. The going was unsteady as the heavy Titan foot smashed down into the ground with devastating force and rose once more into the air.

Kol Badar allowed a pair of cult members wielding reaper autocannons to advance past him, for their powerful guns were able to rip through the armoured plating protecting the sentry guns far more efficiently than flame or bolt. It was a torturous task, for they had to advance up through a barrage of gunfire before they could get a clear shot at the servitor housed just beneath the turret, but time was of the essence.

Up and up the Terminators wound, under constant, desperate attack from the Skitarii climbing behind them and the sentry turrets. Ammunition was running low, and with a blast of fiery promethium directed down over the open stairwell to melt the exposed flesh of a dozen enemy machine-warriors, the last of the heavy flamer reloads was expended. Even if they had not a bolt shell remaining, Kol Badar would fight on and succeed. He would die, with all his Anointed at his side, before he would allow the bitch of a Titan to best him once again. He would rip it apart piece by piece with his bare hands if need be.

The noise of turning machinery became increasingly loud as the Terminators neared the Imperator's knee joint. Abruptly, the last sentry gun was silenced, the milky life-blood of the servitor dripping down through the latticed grill to fall upon its brethren advancing from below. At Kol Badar's direction, blinking demolition melta-charges were attached to bulkheads where he indicated, as scattered gunfire roared up from below, shearing through the metal stairs. Scores of charges were placed, four times the amount that were used to blast away the mountainside. Kol Badar was taking no chances.

He nodded as he studied the placement of the blinking charges.

'Commence the descent,' he ordered and the Anointed warriors began to fight their way back down the staircase that they had just fought so hard to ascend.

'We are entering the range of the Imperator, First Acolyte,' hissed Burias. The massive Titan had already blasted every cult warrior apart.

'If he's failed, this war is going to be over very quickly,' replied Marduk.

He climbed atop a rocky outcrop, allowing the ranks of the Host to advance past him. Vehicles rumbled forward slowly, and Dreadnoughts and Defilers stalked across the broken ground. Burias climbed up behind him, planting the icon in the ground at the First Acolyte's side.

The Imperator raised its leg for another step. A series of internal explosions suddenly burst out around its knee-joint. Flames and smoke erupted from the mechanical joint, a mass of detonation within ripping through the thick, reinforced metal. The bastion foot touched down on the floor of the ravine and a secondary flash of timed demolition charges erupted. For a moment it looked as though they had had no effect, until the knee joint gave way beneath the immense weight of the Titan and it lurched to one side as if in slow motion, thousands of tonnes of metal teetering over the battlefield.

Its weapon arms flailed out as if trying to steady the toppling god-machine, but the Titan was falling, gaining speed as its weight bore it down on the ground. There was silence as it crashed to the ground, until the bastion of one shoulder slammed into the sheer cliff face, causing the mountain range to shudder beneath the impact, and an avalanche of rock was sheared from the cliff. Off balance, the impact caused the Imperator to swing towards the ravine wall and the leering head of the great machine smashed straight into the rock face with a resounding crash. The other leg of the Titan, bearing the entire weight of the colossal machine, buckled suddenly with a screeching sound of wrenching metal. The Imperator slammed to the ground with a deafening boom that echoed through the ravine. The impact caused avalanches of rock and rubble, and hundreds of Guardsmen and Skitarii were slain. A rising cloud of dust obscured the fallen, broken Titan.

As one, the Word Bearers roared victoriously at the sight of the mighty war god dying and Burias raised the Host's icon high into the air for all to see.

'Advance and kill!' roared Marduk and the Host descended upon the shattered vanguard.

After killing the traitor Pierlo, Varnus had expected to be slain by his captives, but if anything, his action seemed to have garnered a kind of hateful respect from the hunched, black-clad overseers. Oh, they had hurt him as they prised him off the corpse of the traitor, filling his body with agonising torment as the vile serums that filled their needle fingers assaulted his nerve endings, but he had been expecting far worse.

But no, he had been dragged from the tower and placed on the chirurgeons' familiar, cold, steel slab. There was no Discord there and he felt naked without it speaking to him. There the spindly creatures had prodded and probed him. They seemed particularly interested in the symbol beneath the skin of his forehead, chittering excitedly amongst themselves. They drew blood from him and fed burning black liquid into his veins. Small, black leech creatures with orange patterns on their backs were attached to him and he howled as they burrowed their heads into his skin. They were pulled back out, bloated and fat, some time later.

The joy of killing the man had filled him with warmth. The traitor had turned against the blessed, hated, False Emperor and had deserved death. Taking his life had been a great release and it made him feel strong and rejuvenated.

The enemy had taken him back to the tower, transporting him back to the top, now hundreds and hundreds of metres above the ground. He was to work alone. Perhaps the overseers feared that he would kill again if he was teamed up with another slave, and perhaps he would have.

The tower was above the level of the black pollution hanging over the city, and it swirled beneath him. The mighty winds that were building didn't seem to touch the tower; it was as if he stood in the middle of the eye of one of the dust devils that raced across the plains, spinning the salt up in twisting cones of wind. The noxious fumes whipped around the tower and it looked to him like a great, black, whirlpool that stretched out as far as the eye could see.

He felt strange without the cover of the smog overhead. Now he could see the blaring white sun during the day and the stars by night. And always there was the red giant planet Korsis, drawing ever closer. It was so large that it almost filled the skyline and Varnus could see valleys, craters and channels criss-crossing its surface.

The brightness pained his eyes and the lack of oxygen made them heavy and sore. Twice a day he was held down as red-black, stinging drops were inserted into the centres of his eyeballs. He screamed as the sharp needles pierced the aqueous humour of his orbs and injected the substance that squirmed and burned within him.

Tirelessly he worked, doing the job of two men, but the toil no longer drained him as it once had. Indeed, time seemed to pass quickly and he was barely aware of the fall of darkness as the white sun disappeared over the horizon and rose again as he worked, smearing the blood mortar over the stones.

A Discord seemed to favour him, if such a thing was possible, and it hung at his side for hours on end, pounding his eardrums with its blare. He could hear the voices talking to him, teaching him and bolstering him when he felt weak.

Sometimes he shook his head as if waking from slumber and the horror of his predicament washed over him. He would cry out at such times, longing for the Emperor's soldiers to rescue him and his world. He would kick out at the Discord and it would retreat from him. But these moments passed quickly and Varnus would recover himself and be somewhat confused. He couldn't remember why he had been angry and he set back to work with vigour, the feel of the blood mortar familiar and comforting beneath his hands.

The daemon speaker would hover slowly forward until it floated less than a metre from him once again. Sometimes its usually limp tentacles would reach forwards and touch him on the neck or the back as he worked. He would recoil in shock and the thing would retreat once again. Over time, he came to ignore the touch of the thing and in a way he found it almost comforting. He felt a strange, warm, buzzing sensation at its touch, but it was not unpleasant.

The Discord told him many interesting things: what the other slaves were thinking, that the overseers were afraid of him and that his power was growing. It talked of the early years of an ancient hero who had been turned into an immortal godling and lived on in a great palace far away, and the warriors that he had trained to spread his word. He wondered if it was the Emperor, but his head had begun to hurt when that thought had crossed his mind and he quickly dismissed it.

Yet even as he had come to bear his hellish existence, he prayed for release. Not death, no, he had lived through too much to simply perish. He was filled with a new vitality and fervour that made him determined to cling to life for as long as he was able, to see this through one way or another.

He prayed for deliverance and tears ran down his face as he felt himself becoming lost. Had the Emperor forsaken him? Did His light no longer shine upon Tanakreg? Had he been abandoned to his fate? For the first time since the occupation, Varnus felt true despair pull at him. He prayed vainly to the Emperor, but felt no comfort in his soul. No, he felt nothing but emptiness.

The next moment he had forgotten why he had been crying and wiped away his tears in bafflement. Shrugging, he continued his work. The Gehemehnet needed tending.

The slaughter had been immense and the valley was filled with the dead and dying. A cloying stink rose as the temperature soared, the hot-white sun overhead baking the earth. The wreck of the Titan was like the discarded shell of some giant colossus and scattered debris littered the ravine floor. The battle had been intense. The Word Bearers advanced into the confused Imperial lines after the Imperator's fall, killing thousands of their foes as they tried to realign their battle line and draw support up past the massive frame of the Exemplis.

The enemy had inflicted a terrible blow and had retreated once the Imperial reinforcements were brought forward. They had suffered relatively few casualties.

A day had passed and the giant Ordinatus Magentus rumbled towards the valley. It was so massive that it was barely able to fit through the ravine and there was no possible way that it would be able pass the fallen Titan. It came to a halt some kilometres back, where the valley was wider.

A dozen, giant, spiked stabiliser legs unfolded to either side of the titanic vehicle, steam hissing out into the hot air as their mechanics were engaged. They reached out to either side of the massive structure and drove down into the ground.

The air tingled with power as giant energy cores were readied and the massive ribbed cone of the Ordinatus's main gun was raised. A sound like a thousand jet engines began to whine, soon reaching a screaming intensity that reverberated through the earth. Elysians within a kilometre of the giant machine clutched hands to their ears as the giant creature made ready to unleash its power.

The air around the ribbed cone-tip of the giant weapon began to shimmer and waver and then the Ordinatus fired.

A deafening, sharp crack like the sound of a planet ripped in two resounded through the valley. Pre-warned, all the Elysians in the vicinity had engaged the sound mufflers within their helmets, but even so the blast of sound was deafening, making Havorn's eardrums vibrate painfully. An ungodly silence followed as if all noise had been sucked out of the valley by the focused blast of sonic energy, and the air between the gun and the valley wall wavered and reverberated.

The effect was astounding. Where the centre of the focused beam of sound struck the wall the rock was turned to dust, exploding outwards in a massive blast as it was shattered down to the molecular level. A wave seemed to spread from the epicentre and the rock rippled as if it were liquid, huge cracks appearing in its wake. Vibrating and shattered, the entire rock face broke apart and fell to the valley floor with a crash that rumbled along the entire mountain range. A huge cloud of salt dust rose up into the air.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The battle for Tanakreg had ground down into a brutal war of attrition. Within five days, the ravine had been levelled by the sheer power of the Ordinatus machine. Its sonic disruptor had reverberated through the mountains, shattering stone to powder and causing vast avalanches that could be felt halfway across the continent. Laron had only ever read about such a weapon and to see it in action was awe-inspiring.

The steep cliff walls had been reduced to dust and the valleys were filled with crumbled salt rock, creating a vast expanse that the Imperial Guard and Mechanicus forces rolled across. The going was difficult, but with the steep ravine walls reduced to nothing, they were able to attack on a wide front. The enemy was unable to contain the sheer number of the Imperial troopers and they were relentlessly pushed back.

The enemy had launched several vicious assaults to destroy the potent weapon, but Havorn had charged Laron with the protection of the Ordinatus and he had coordinated effective battles to stall the attacks. He had used his Valkyries effectively, rapidly redeploying units of his 72nd to launch counter-attacks into the flanks of the foe as they advanced, while the tech-guard of the Mechanicus had taken the brunt of the frontal attack. As he dropped more troopers into the flanks of the enemy, Havorn had directed heavier support forwards. Assailed on all sides, the enemy advance had been quashed time and again. He relished these battles. Now that the terrain had been levelled out, he had found the enemy much easier to deal with.

He snorted, easier to deal with indeed. He had fought the traitor Astartes only once before and they were the toughest and deadliest foes that he had ever encountered in all his days of soldiering. Still, without having to advance up narrow defiles, the small number of the enemy meant that the vast Imperial war engine could grind on. Though their attacks on the traitors became more directed and hate fuelled, they were unable to close on the Ordinatus Magentus.

Tens of thousands of Imperial troopers had been slaughtered and, wherever the enemy dug in for a concerted battle, they inflicted horrendous casualties. But it was not enough to halt the never-ending tide of Guardsmen, Skitarii warriors and vehicles. The foe was spread too thin and their flanks were surrounded and overrun. It was simply too wide a front for them to cover and there were too few of them to fight the type of war that suited the massed ranks of the Imperial Guard so well.

Laron had capitalised on this and had ordered hundreds of Valkyries ahead of the main Imperial entourage. Already his storm troopers had assaulted and destroyed several of the enemy anti-aircraft guns emplaced on the foothills of the mountains and he knew that the time would soon come when the Imperials would be able to push forwards and take the fight onto the plains.

Vast lines of siege tanks ground inexorably forward behind the infantry, pounding the enemy with ordnance outranging anything they had.

Slowly the enemy had been driven back, pushed out of the mountains and onto the salt plains that spread out like a rippling blanket towards Shinar. If they could push the foe back to the peninsula on which Shinar sat then they would eventually grind them down and destroy them utterly. Though he saw that the old brigadier-general grieved for every soldier that they lost, he could also see that the Imperial commander was confident of their eventual victory.

It was not the type of war that Laron liked, for it was more suited to the style, or lack of it, of other Imperial Guard regiments. His soldiers of the 72nd were drop-troopers, and in this war of attrition, the unique skills and talents of his units were not being utilised to their full capacity. As soon as the battle reached the plains though, it would be a different matter.

The sheer number of casualties amongst the tech-guard had been staggering, but ever more of the mindless tech-soldiers marched from the vast facto-rum crawlers that ground over the earth in the wake of the army.

Laron had seen the mechanised enhancements and weapons of fallen tech-guard servitors being recovered as the Imperials pushed ever forward and he knew that they were used to create more lobotomised, unfeeling soldiers. Brigadier-General Havorn had spoken of what became of the flesh of the fallen tech-guard and Laron had been horrified.

It was like some archaic necromancy, he thought, to reuse the flesh and armaments of the dead to create new soldiers to throw thoughtlessly at the enemy. It was morbid and repugnant, and he tried as best he could to keep his men away from them. What was it that the magos called them? Skitarii? They were unnatural and they made his men uneasy. Hell, they made him uneasy. Soldiers that had no notion of fear or self-preservation, he was certain they would all march straight off a cliff to their doom at a word from the magos.

Soldiering was meant to be glorious: heroes were made on the battlefield and the victories of those heroes would be recorded for ever more back on Elysia, recounted in song at the great banquet feasts and balls of his home world. War was a noble act where one could gain honour and standing. There was no such honour or heroism amongst the Skitarii. They were little more than automata, playing pieces of their callous masters. What honour was there to be gained fighting alongside such as them?

He had been fascinated and horrified in equal measures when he had first seen inside one of the mobile factorum crawlers. The motionless shapes of pale-fleshed humans were held in vast aisles of bubbling vat-tanks, kept in a dormant state. That single factorum must have held ten thousand inert bodies, or ''flesh units'' as the magos called them. Darioq had coldly explained that while the Mechanicus was capable of creating its own vat-grown host bodies, it was time consuming and resource heavy, so most of these soldiers were from the other Imperial Guard units within the Crusade. They had suffered grave injuries, leaving them alive, but brain-dead. Others were criminals and deserters, and the punishment for their crimes was to be turned over to the Mechanicus.

They were destined to become battle servitors, all semblances of their former selves erased with mind-wipes and the removal of their frontal lobes. Indeed, Darioq had stated, the entire right hemisphere of the brain was removed from all but a few, those used as shock-troops and specialists, where a certain degree of adaptability and autonomous decision making, albeit severely limited in nature, was required.

Such concepts as creativity were clearly frowned upon within the Mechanicus and Laron had found this galling, for it was anathema to the way that the Elysians operated. Adaptability, being able to react to changing directives, objectives and situations, and the ability to operate effectively deep behind enemy lines with little or no direction from the upper echelons of command, were all favoured skills in the ranks of the Elysians. Those same traits were deplored as dangerous and heretical amongst the adepts of the Machine-God.

'Deep in thought, acting colonel?' asked a voice behind him and Laron turned to see the approach of the leather-clad figure of Kheler walking towards him.

'Commissar,' said Laron in acknowledgement. The commissar had been his shadow ever since Havorn had assigned him to watch over Laron and he had certainly not been lax in his duty. Wherever he turned, the man was there, watching and listening, waiting for him to slip up.

'Survived another day without getting shot then, acting colonel?'

'The day isn't over yet, Kheler.'

The commissar chuckled. It was insulting and belittling to have the man watching over him and the threat of his presence was obvious. His uniform demanded respect, yet he was a canny warrior and a highly capable officer.

The swiftness and the severity of his judgement was shocking. The commissar had been smiling and talking with one of Laron's men, but had executed that same man without a thought not an hour later when the trooper had turned to flee because his lasgun's powercell had run dry. A laspistol blast in the man's head had shown all the troopers that cowardice of any kind would not be tolerated.

'You do not flee the enemy under any circumstances!' he had roared. 'The Emperor watches over you! If your power cell runs dry, you pick up the weapon of a fallen comrade. If that runs out of ammunition, you draw your pistol. If you have no pistol, you fight with your knife. If your knife breaks, you fight with your bare hands. And if your hands are cut off, still you do not flee, you attack the enemy with any weapon that you have. You bite their damned kneecaps off if that's all you can do!'

That had got a scattered laugh and Laron had marvelled at the commissar's skill. The man had just killed one of their comrades and he had got them to laugh.

'But you do not flee!' Kheler had shouted severely, his eyes wide and threatening. 'Or I promise you, as the Emperor is my witness, I will gun you down like traitorous dogs.'

'Motivation,' the commissar had explained to Laron. 'That is what I provide to the regiment. The threat of a bullet in the back of the head is good motivation not to turn tail and run.'

The man switched from jocular comrade to ruthless executioner in a second. Even knowing this, Laron found it hard to dislike the man.

'Aren't you hot in all that get up?' asked Laron, motioning towards the commissar's long, black, leather coat and hat. The temperature over the last days had soared and any sign of the storms of the week before were long passed.

'Hot, acting colonel? Yes, I am damn hot, but do you think I would look such a commanding figure if I were stripped down to my undergarments? And besides, I look damn good in black. Dashing is a word that springs to mind.'

Laron snorted and shook his head.

'We are only flying to the front to see if the enemy truly are retreating into the plains, or if it is some ploy.'

'Must keep up appearances, acting colonel,' replied Kheler.

'Hold on to your hat, commissar,' said Laron as the dark shape of a Valkyrie approached overhead and the Elysian clicked his visor down over his eyes.

The screaming reverse thruster jets of the Valkyrie blew salt dust up into the air as they rotated towards the ground. Laron smirked as the commissar shielded his eyes with one hand while the other was clamped down on his leather hat to keep it from blowing away in the hot blasts of air coming from the engines.

The aircraft touched down onto the ground and its door slid open. With a nod to the men inside, Laron climbed aboard and turned to help the commissar. The man fell into his seat, blinking salt dust and grit from his eyes. Laron stood in the open doorway grabbing the overhead rail tightly as the Valkyrie left the ground and began a vertical ascent into the air, turning slightly.

The Imperial battle force was spread out beneath him. Lines of tanks rolled towards the front and tens of thousands of men marched in snaking columns over the rough ground below. Free of the constriction of the ravine, the army moved forward quickly and in good order. It was surprisingly tiring to organise the dispositions and lines of advance, but no doubt that was why Havorn had ordered him to do it, to test how he progressed.

It was certainly very different from being a captain. He had not thought it would be quite as difficult and exhausting as this. A lot of thankless organisational and logistical work required his attention, and he found that he was weary beyond words. He was far more tired than he had ever been when engaged on the front line, or even more than when he had been when engaged in deep missions on enemy territory. At those times he would snatch sleep when he could get it, an hour here, a few minutes there, but at least that sleep had been deep and restful, even if it was in the middle of a siege barrage. Now he felt as if he hadn't slept for weeks and when he did sleep he was still filled with concerns and worries.

There were a thousand and one jobs that needed his agreement, his sign-off and his input, and he had found it overwhelming. He was floundering and he couldn't see how he could get on top of it all. It was difficult at first to know what truly needed his attention and what could be delegated to his captains. His respect for Havorn had grown immeasurably as he realised the responsibilities of command that must weigh upon him. But he never showed it. He was always the tough old campaigner and none doubted his judgement.

His captains: it still sounded strange to him. He was no longer one of them. Now he was their colonel and the easy camaraderie he had once shared with them was long gone. He grinned at that. In truth, there had never been any easy camaraderie with most of the other captains. They had always seen him as an arrogant bastard, the "glory boy" captain of the storm troopers. And they were mostly right.

It felt good to be in the air again and away from the pressures of his position, and he hated slogging along on foot. That was grunt's work. He was a glory boy, damn it, and if they were going to say it anyway, he might as well live like one.

'You think the enemy is truly retreating, colonel?' asked the commissar, though Laron knew that he already knew the answer. This was for the benefit of the men around them. He noted that in die presence of other members of the 72nd the commissar left out the acting part of his title. No doubt that was something else to do with motivation. He was a clever bastard.

'It's been hard and we have lost a lot of good men, but the enemy are falling back. I just want to see the traitors fleeing with my own eyes. The Emperor is with us! We will make them pay for the deaths of the men of the 72nd.'

He saw a slight smile in the eyes of the commissar as he played along.

'Motivation is vitally important,' the commissar had said earlier, 'whether it comes from the threat of a bullet, the impassioned speech of an officer, or propaganda from the mouth of a commissar, it doesn't matter. All that matters is that your soldiers fight and that they have fire in the bellies. For some that comes from faith, for others it is from outrage. It doesn't matter. But you must never miss an opportunity to inspire your men. It's not much, but a word here and there goes a long way with the common soldiers.'

These conversations with the commissar had been playing on his mind and he had begun to wonder if that was another reason why Havorn had attached the commissar to his staff, to teach him the power of motivation in all its forms.

'By the Emperor's name, they will pay,' said Laron once more.

The view on the grainy, black and white pict screen had been astonishing as Marduk's Thunderhawk made its approach into Shinar. It was almost unrecognisable from the original Imperial city. From this high in the air, nothing of it could at first be seen, but the immense Gehemehnet tower that rose into the atmosphere. It was as if some astral deity had hurled a mighty spear into the planet, skewering it. It could be seen for thousands of kilometres all around when the air was clear.

Beneath the tower, lower in the atmosphere and hanging directly over Shinar, was a thick, oily, black smog. It was roiling and contorting as if alive and it was swirling around the tower that rose in its midst. The tower was the very centre of the gaseous maelstrom and the fumes were thickest there, the winds strongest.

Nothing could penetrate the thick, noxious smog cloud, not even the Thunderhawk's sensitive, daemon infused sensor arrays. Marduk knew that the Gehemehnet was creating a wide cone of warp interference that spewed out through the atmosphere and beyond. This interference would effectively make the entire side of the planet all but invisible to the enemy. Just as he thought of this, the Thunderhawk's pict-screen flickered and degenerated to static. The power of the Gehemehnet was indiscriminate in whose equipment it affected. The gunship was still around two hundred kilometres from Shinar, but had clearly entered the wide cone of disruption. The Thunderhawk had no need for concern - it did not rely upon technical arrays and its witch sight saw all the more clearly within the warp field.

Marduk felt the field close over him and his twin hearts palpitated erratically for a moment, his breath catching in his chest. It was joyous to feel the power of the Immaterium wash over him. He heard the whispers of daemons in the air. He felt his sacred bond to the warp strengthen and his power with it. The Dark Apostle was wielding some powerful faith to have created a warp field of such potency.

Movement flickered at the corner of his eyes and he felt presences brush past him. The barriers between the realms of Chaos and the material plane were thin. He could almost make out the daemonic entities straining from beyond to cross the thin walls and enter the physical world. Soon, he whispered to them. Soon the barriers would be stripped away like flesh from bone and then they would be able to take corporeal form and bring hell to this world.

He felt a certain amount of apprehension as he approached Shinar and the Dark Apostle. To wield such power! Never had he been witness to such a feat of strength from the holy leader as this. He had not imagined that Jarulek would have been able to create such a powerful Gehemehnet. He had believed that the Dark Apostle had long reached the apex of his rise and that his own rise would eclipse Jarulek's power over the next millennia. Could he have underestimated him?

An uncomfortable and uncharacteristic flicker of doubt squirmed within him. Could he wield such power? He knew that he could not, not yet, but he was certain that his powers would treble once he passed the full indoctrinations required to become a true Dark Apostle. He would take up that mantle and soon, no matter what the cost or sacrifice required. Long had he waited for his moment to arise and he would be damned before he saw his opportunity splutter and die out like a blood-wick before it had even begun to blaze.

He was rocked as strong winds buffeted the Thunderhawk. The engines screamed as they fought against being sucked into the swirling morass rotating around the Gehemehnet. The speed of the wind whipping around the tower must have been immense. Pushing these thoughts from his mind, he closed his eyes and let his spirit break free of his earthly body.

Invisible and formless, he soared from the Thunderhawk, passing through its thick, armoured hull and out into the atmosphere beyond. The powerful winds touched him not at all, and with a thought he hurtled across the sky towards the rising Gehemehnet, faster than any crude mechanical aircraft ever could. This was the way of the spirit and with his insubstantial warp-touched eyes he saw the world in a different light.

The material world around him was shadowy and dim, a pale and dull land. With his sight he saw not the light of the sun, nor the colours of the mundane world, all was but shades of grey, lifeless and monotone. There was movement all around, the movement of daemons separated from the mundane world by only a micro-thin layer of reality. He flew somewhere in between the two worlds, neither truly in the real nor the Ether, but he could perceive both.

He heard nothing but the scraping, garbled cacophony of noise that was the sound of Chaos. A million scrambled, screaming voices mixed with the roars and whispers of daemons. It was to Marduk a comforting, neutral sound in the back of his mind. It was too easy for the unwary or uninitiated to be forever lost in the sound. If you listened too closely, it would draw you into it and never let you have peace.

Marduk willed himself on, drawn towards the massive Gehemehnet tower that rose in both the material world and the warp. It existed in both planes and it was not a monotone shadow like the rest of the world he passed over. Far from it, for the Gehemehnet tower was ablaze with light and colour. Deep red and purple shades blurred across its surface amid flashes of metallic sheen, like those created by oil on water.

Tiny pinpricks of light, countless thousands of them, marked the soul fires of the mortal worker slaves who toiled over the physical construct of the Gehemehnet. They were like tiny burning suns. Some burnt bright and fierce, their spirits strong, while others grew pale and faltering. Carrion daemons of the warp clustered around each burning soul fire, along with an endless myriad of daemons of other bizarre and horrific forms. They clumped around the souls of the living like cold children around a campfire in winter, straggling against each other to be the closest to the blaze. The mortals were completely unaware of the attention that they received, save perhaps for an occasional feeling of coldness, or a flicker of movement in the corner of the eye.

The kathartes were there, clustered around the bright soul lights, and they raised their beautiful, pristine and predatory feminine faces at his approach. They kicked away from their vigils and soared towards him upon glowing feathered wings. In the Ether they were angelic and alluring - it was only when they breached the material plane that they became twisted hag furies.

As he drew nearer the pulsating Gehemehnet, he saw the soul fire of one of the slaves flicker and dim as the man gave up his hold on his mortal body. Instantly, the pale light of the spirit was set upon by the daemons huddled around it and its light was hidden amongst the dense ball of daemons that were wild in their ravenous feeding frenzy as they consumed the unfortunate soul.

The soul fire of one slave drew his attention, for it was different from the others. It was bright and fierce, with a grand cluster of over a thousand ethereal denizens of the warp around it, and Marduk could feel their expectation. This one was favoured indeed, he thought.

A sudden tug upon his spirit pulled at Marduk and he allowed himself to be drawn towards the calling. In an instant he had passed through the walls of the shattered palace of Shinar and hovered before the Dark Apostle. He was infused with light, a strong presence in the warp as in reality. He turned his earthly eyes to look at Marduk and smiled.

'Welcome, my First Acolyte. I thought I felt your questing spirit lurking nearby.'

I wished to see the glory of your Gehemehnet with more than the limited faculties of my mortal being, my lord.

'Of course. Its power waxes strong.'

It does, my lord. It is nearing completion?

'It is close, but I need your strength, First Acolyte, to complete the rituals of binding. This is why I recalled you from battle.'

The battle fares poorly. It is shaming.

'I would sacrifice the entire Host in order to fulfill the will of the Dark Council, if such was needed.'

And the warrior-brothers of the Legion will lay their lives down if that is what is required of them.

'Yet you struggle, First Acolyte. Why is that?'

The Coryphaus must be punished for his failures.

'Must? You would make demands of me, First Acolyte?'

No, my lord.

'I have faith in my Coryphaus, First Acolyte. To doubt his abilities is a reflection of your doubt of me, for he is my chosen representative in all matters of war. You would insult me in such a way, dear Marduk?'

No, my lord.

'Do not defy me, young one. You are no Dark Apostle yet, and I hold the key to your future within my hand. I can destroy you at my will.'

It will be as you will it, Dark Apostle, said Marduk, and took his leave. His spirit soared high into the upper atmosphere. Hundreds of daemons were drawn to him, feeding upon the hot emotions of hate and anger flowing from his spirit.

The tent flap was thrown open and Havorn stooped to enter the shelter. The air was heavy and cloying with the stale smell of sweat. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the gloom before he could make out the three medicae officers standing over the cot in the corner. One of them approached him, saluting, and he recognised the man as Michelac, the chief surgeon of the 133rd. His black rimmed eyes were tired.

'It's not good, sir,' he said.

'What the hell happened?' asked Havorn.

'Astropath Klistorman collapsed late yesterday afternoon, as you know. He was ranting and was suffering severe convulsions, and he was bleeding from the nose. I suspected an internal haemorrhage within his brain: such a thing could have been building there for months. But he seemed to regain his strength this morning and he seemed to have suffered no ill effects.

'This afternoon, however, he has had a series of episodes. He is sleeping now, but they are getting worse.'

'There are other astropaths with the fleet. This is war, medic, and people die. Why did you call me down here?'

The medicae officer licked his dry, cracked lips.

'His ranting has disturbed me. He has spoken of things that chill my soul.'

'You fear possession?' asked Havorn sharply, his hand falling to his holstered weapon.

'No sir, not that, thankfully,' said the man hurriedly. 'But… I know that astropaths are powerful psykers, sir. I am no expert in such things, but I am of the understanding that they are able to see things that humble men like I cannot. In my opinion, that is not a blessing but a curse.'

'So what has he been speaking of?'

'When his words are decipherable, he has been speaking of some construction of the enemy. It will erupt with power when the "Red orb waxes strongest" I believe were his words. Given that there is a damned big red planet hanging in the sky, I thought that you might wish to know what he said.'

Havorn walked to the side of the cot and looked down upon his astropath. The man was skeletally thin, his skin ashen. He wore a metallic, domed helmet over his head and his eyes were concealed beneath it, though there were no eye slits or visor. Pipes and wiring protruded from the back of the helmet, disappearing beneath his high-necked, sweat soaked robes. He was bound with leather straps, holding him firmly upon the cot.

'I didn't want to remove any of his accoutrements. I feared that I might harm him, or me,' muttered the medic. 'I ordered him restrained so that he did not harm himself if he had another seizure.'

Havorn nodded.

'Did he say what would happen when this power he talked about was unleashed?' he asked.

'He was not particularly lucid, sir. Most of his words were gibberish. He did, however, talk of hell being unleashed and of this world being turned inside out.'

The astropath coughed suddenly, blood and phlegm on his lips, and then he began to go into severe convulsions. The muscles in his neck strained as his entire body went rigid and shook, and the medic pushed a piece of leather between his teeth to stop him from biting though his own tongue. He twitched spasmodically for thirty seconds before going limp, his breathing heavy and ragged. He spat the leather from his mouth and turned his sightless gaze towards Brigadier-General Havorn.

'It draws near!' he said in a coarse whisper, flecks of foam spitting from his mouth. 'As the red orb waxes strong, it will erupt! Damnation! It will awaken Damnation! Destroy it before the time comes. It is…' The man's words dissolved into unintelligible gargles as another fit took hold of him.

'See to him as best you can,' said Havorn and he took his leave. Walking out of the tent, he raised his gaze to the giant red planet Korsis looming overhead. He had been told that it would be at its closest to Tanakreg in five days time.

Five days to wipe the enemy clear of the planet before whatever it was that the astropath had seen would occur. He wished that he could discount the man's fevered words as those of a diseased mind, but he felt that there was something in them.

Damn it, was he getting superstitious in his old age?

His gaze turned towards the insane construction that rose like a needle into the atmosphere. It was hard to believe it was over a thousand kilometres away.

It had to be destroyed. Five days, he thought.

'I am withdrawing the Host back to the defensive earthworks and bunkers outside the ruins of the city, my lord,' growled Kol Badar. He squeezed the trigger of his combi-bolter and ragged fire ripped apart the chest of yet another enemy trooper. There were thousands of them advancing all along the battle front and the Coryphaus's armour was slick with gore and the foul, milky, nutrient-rich blood of the Skitarii.

'I cannot hold them at the mountains with the valleys destroyed and our numbers are too few to halt them on the salt plains,' he said as he gunned down more soldiers advancing relentlessly into the Word Bearers' fire. The ground was liberally littered with the dead, yet the enemy continued to advance, stepping over the bodies of their fallen comrades. Others were crushed beneath the rolling tracks of battle tanks and mechanised crawlers. Earth and bodies exploded around him as shells from battle cannons pounded the line. Searing lascannons silenced a Leman Russ tank, blowing its turret clear of its chassis and Kol Badar heard the roars of the Warmonger nearby as the revered ancient one relived some long past battle as it killed.

The voice of his master, the Dark Apostle, throbbed in his head.

The time of the Gehemehnet's awakening draws near. Allow it to be interrupted and your pain shall know no bounds, my Coryphaus.

'I would gladly give my life in sacrifice for my failures, my lord,' said Kol Badar as he stepped slowly backwards, snapping off sharp bursts of fire left and right.

'Seventh and eighteenth coterie, close ranks and give covering fire,' he ordered, switching his comm-channel briefly. 'Twenty-first and eleventh, disengage and back off.'

You have a duty to perform, Kol Badar, and you will have no such release while it remains unfulfilled.

'Burias, ensure they do not encircle us with their light vehicles. Engage and destroy them,' he ordered before closing the comm once again.

'My lord is merciful.'

No, I am not. Your failure will not go unpunished, nor will it be forgotten. Allow none to assail the Gehemehnet. Sacrifice every last warrior-brother before you allow a single enemy to launch an attack against it. Do this and the Dark Council will be pleased. Fail again and eternal torment will be yours.

'I will fight them every step of the way, my lord,' swore Kol Badar. 'I have ordered Bokkar and the reserve to strengthen the defences, preparing for the arrival of the Host. We will hold.'

Succeed in this, my Coryphaus, and I will give you what you most desire. I will give you the First Acolyte, and you can finish what you once started.

Kol Badar blinked his eyes in surprise. He clenched his power claw tightly, the talons of the mighty weapon crackling with energy as he slew another pair of enemy soldiers, his fire cutting through their midsections. He chuckled in anticipation and felt a savage joy fire within him.

'I will not fail, my lord. I swear it before all the great gods of Chaos. I will not fail.'

BOOK THREE:

ASCENSION

'With victories over others, we conquer. But with victories over ourselves, we are exalted. There must always be contests, and you must always win.'

- Kor Phaeron - Master of the Faith

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The Imperial Dictator class cruiser Vigilance moved soundlessly through the void of space as it rounded the war-torn planet, dropping into close orbit. The calculations had to be absolutely precise and the logic engines housed within the bridge had been working constantly to provide the complex algorithms calculating the exact moment for the barrage to be unleashed.

The area of jammed communications was broad: to risk the Vigilance entering the field was testament to the severity of the threat. All sensory equipment was rendered useless as soon as they entered the zone. Even the astropaths were unable to pierce the gloom projected up from the planet's surface. Once within the field, the Vigilance was utterly cut off from the outside world. The only guiding light was that of the Astronomican, which Navigators could still thankfully perceive.

Nevertheless, to launch an orbital bombardment essentially blind was highly unorthodox and the risks were high. However, the Admiral had been insistent and the cogitators had been consulted to predict the exact mathematics required to plan such an endeavour.

The approach of the cruiser was painstakingly enacted. If it were but a fraction of a degree off its angle of approach, if its speed was slightly out and the tip of the massive cruiser off by the smallest fraction then the bombardment would miss the planet altogether, or would fall far from the target. Worse, it could fall upon the Imperial Guard on the planet's surface far below.

With its holo-screens blank and its sensor arrays rendered inoperative, the Dictator cruiser advanced into position. Muttering prayers to the Emperor that the algorithms he had been provided with were accurate and that his team of logisticians had coordinated them exactly, the ship's flag-captain breathed out slowly as the gunnery master initiated the launch sequence. The port battery, housing hundreds of massive weapons that could cripple a battle cruiser, were activated. Thousands of indentured workers slaved to match the exact range and trajectory initiated by the gunnery crew as they readied to fire. The gunnery captain prayed that his barrage would fall against the target.

His worry was in vain, for the Vigilance never had a chance to unleash its orbital bombardment.

A surge of warp energy from the infant Gehemehnet surged from the tower, creating an opening to the Ether for the smallest fraction of a second. In that brief flicker, the darkness of space was replaced with the roiling, red netherworld, a place of horror where the natural laws of the universe held no sway, and the nightmares of those of the material plane were given form. It was filled with screams and roars and the deafening, maddening blare of Chaos. It lasted but the blink of an eye, but when it passed, the Vigilance had gone with it, dragged into the realm of the Chaos gods.

Without the protection of its Gellar field, which it had no time to erect, the cruiser was overran with hundreds of thousands of daemonic entities, its structure turned inside out. The physical forms of those unfortunates within the Dictator cruiser were driven instantly insane at the exposure to the pure energy of the warp, their bodies mutating wildly as Chaos took hold. Their souls were devoured and their screams joined with those of countless billions who had been consumed to feed the insatiable gods of the realm. Within the blink of an eye the Vigilance was no more.

Marduk was rocked as the fledgling strength of the Gehemehnet surged. Such staggering power!

Only once before had he witnessed the birthing of a Gehemehnet, for to construct one of the potent totems was a draining experience. Only the most powerful Dark Apostles would even attempt to create one, and the process would often leave them shattered wrecks, weak shadows of their former selves.

Jarulek's presence was evidence of the truth of this. Marduk had been shocked by the appearance of his master when he had arrived back at the rained shell of the once prosperous Imperial city.

Jarulek seemed to have aged several millennia. His skin was sunken and wasted, and bones and spider-web lines of veins were clearly visible beneath translucent, script inscribed flesh. His lips were thin and drawn back from his teeth like those of a long-dead corpse. Deep, dark, sepulchral sockets surrounded his eyes, though they flashed with defiant strength.

He is weak, thought Marduk, licking his lips.

'You feel the awakening, First Acolyte,' said Jarulek.

'Yes, Dark Apostle. It is… astounding.' Marduk replied truthfully. 'It must have taken much of your strength to imbue the tower with such potency.'

Jarulek waved a hand dismissively.

'The great gods gift me with the power to enact their will,' said the Dark Apostle lightly, but Marduk could see that he was almost utterly drained.

Jarulek saw Marduk's narrowed eyes and raised an eyebrow on his skeletal face.

'You have something to say, First Acolyte?'

'No, my Dark Apostle,' he said. It would not be wise for Marduk to antagonise his master, not yet. 'I am merely in awe of the power of your faith. I aspire one day to reach such glorified heights.'

'Perhaps, but the path to enlightenment is a long and painful road. Many fall along the way to eternal damnation and torment, seeking that which they desire too quickly, or by taking up challenges that are far beyond their reach,' said the Dark Apostle evenly, his velvet voice enunciating the words carefully.

'With your guidance, lord, I hope to avoid falling prey to such temptations,' said Marduk.

'As I would expect, my First Acolyte. The Imperials draw near?'

'They do, my lord. The Coryphaus pulls the Host back from its advance.'

'I do not require the Host to hold them indefinitely. It is but days until the conjunction. That is when Korsis will be largest in the sky and the seven planets of this system will be aligned. We need but hold them until then. The Coryphaus understands my needs.'

'To be pushed back at all is an insult to the Legion. It shames us all.'

'To expect the unattainable is foolish, my First Acolyte. I never asked Kol Badar to destroy the foe, it is unnecessary. He must merely hold them until the alignment and buy time for the Gehemehnet to be completed.'

'And it is nearing completion, my lord?'

'It is. That is why I have called you back from the front line, to aid me in the final stages of its summoning. This Gehemehnet is to be different from any other totem that has been constructed before, for I have called it forth not to turn this planet to a daemon world, but to shatter it utterly,' said the Dark Apostle with a smile on his face.

'My lord?'

'It must be complete for the alignment. When the red planet is high, the Daemonschage will toll, signalling the death of this planet, and a great treasure will be revealed, a treasure that will be unlocked by the Enslaved.'

'The Enslaved?'

'One who will come to us. With the secrets unlocked, we will launch a new era of terror upon the followers of the Corpse Emperor. We will take the fight to those we hate the most.'

'The arrogant, cursed offspring of Guilliman,' said Marduk.

'Indeed.'

'First Acolyte, a question.'

'Yes, my lord?' asked Marduk, frowning.

'Have any holy scriptures appeared on your flesh yet?'

'No, my lord. I bear none but the passage that you honoured me with,' he said, indicating his left cheek where the skin of the Dark Apostle had knitted with his own.

'Tell me immediately if words begin to form upon your skin, First Acolyte. They… they mark your readiness to proceed with your induction into the fold.'

'Thank you, my lord,' said Marduk, bemused. 'I will consult you immediately should such a thing occur.'

'They are planning to pound us into the ground with their artillery,' commented Burias, standing atop the first defensive line and watching as the Imperials advanced slowly. 'Are we just going to cower back here and allow them?'

The salt plains were spread with Imperials as far as the eye could see. They advanced in a massive, sweeping arc towards the curved first line of the Word Bearers' defence. The first bulwark was wider than the other three that guarded the crumbled remains of the Imperial city and, but for the reserve led by Bokkar, every warrior of the Host stood upon it awaiting the enemy. Havoc squads hunkered down within those bunkers that were intact, placed at one hundred metre intervals.

Burias and Kol Badar stood side by side as they watched the advance of the foe. A mass of salt dust rose up behind the advancing army.

Kol Badar swung around, his one good eye staring coldly down at the Icon Bearer. His other eye, shattered by shrapnel, had been replaced with an arcane augmetic sensor by the chirurgeons.

'You question the orders of your Coryphaus, whelp?' he snarled.

'No, Coryphaus, but I feel Drak'shal raging to be unleashed.'

'Keep a rein on your daemon parasite, Burias. Its time will come soon.'

'I shall, Coryphaus.'

'They have more ordnance than we.'

'There is no sign of that Ordinatus machine, though.'

'No. Its range is not as great as their artillery's. If it advanced ahead of the main battle line, it would sustain damage. The methodology of the Adeptus Mechanicus is rigid. They deviate not at all from their ritual tenets and the modes of behaviour programmed into their mechanical heads. They will not risk damage to the machine.'

'You know a lot about the followers of the Machine-God, my lord?'

'I have learnt much from the Forgemasters of Ghalmek. And I fought alongside Tech-Priests of the Mechanicum during the Great Crusade, marching to battle alongside blessed Lorgar and the Warmaster,' he said, bitterness in his voice. 'And afterwards, I fought against them.'

'I am sorry to have dredged up painful memories, Coryphaus.'

Kol Badar waved away the words of the younger Word Bearers warrior-brother.

'Bitterness, anger and hatred is what fuels the fires within. If we forget the past then we will lose the passion to dethrone the False Emperor. To lose the fire is to fail in our sacred duty, the Long War,' growled Kol Badar. A thought struck him, was the Dark Apostle fuelling his own hatred of the First Acolyte to keep the fires within him stoked? He dismissed the thought instantly as irrelevant to the situation at hand.

The Coryphaus placed the talons of his power claw upon Burias's shoulder plate and exerted just enough pressure for the ceramite to groan.

'No, we do not attack just yet. But when we do, Burias, you will lead it,' he said generously.

'You do me much honour, Coryphaus,' said Burias, surprise on his face.

'You may be the lackey of a wretched whoreson, but you should not be held in the shadows because of it,' said Kol Badar.

Burias tensed and the warlord could see the daemon within flash in his eyes.

'The First Acolyte is on the cusp of greatness,' said Kol Badar, 'though it is a dangerous position and his fate is not yet determined. He may yet be deemed unworthy. Your precious master may fail at the last. Be wary, young Burias. Make sure you know where your loyalty lies, with the Legion, or with an individual.'

Burias stared at the Coryphaus for a moment before he gave a sharp nod of his head and Kol Badar released his crushing grip on the Icon Bearer's shoulder.

'Do well, and I will see you initiated into the cult of the Anointed,' said Kol Badar and he was pleased to see fires of ambition and greed come to life within the younger Icon Bearer's eyes. He had him.

'Go now. Gather the most vicious berserkers of the Host. I want eight fully mechanised coteries ready to roll out on my word. I feel that the enemy will bring the fight to us, and when they do, I want you ready to meet them head on.'

Marduk walked with the Dark Apostle towards a small, twin-engine transport, the pair of holy warriors accompanied by an honour guard. Daemon heads spewed smoke as its engines were revved and the doors hissed shut behind the Word Bearers. Marduk saw the Dark Apostle's eyes close in prayer or exhaustion.

On the short journey to the base of the Gehemehnet, Marduk marvelled at how the Imperial city had been transformed. From a bustling city of millions, it had been rendered into a wasteland of industry. Every building had been levelled and the fires of the Chaos factorums blazed in the dim light, spewing fumes and smog into the roiling sky. The ground was black with oil and pollution, and lines of slaves, each a thousand strong or more, wound through the black detritus and slag piles like multi-legged insects. Huge pistons drove up and down, conveyor belts piled with rock and bodies fed into hissing, steaming vaults and furnaces, and chains with links larger than battle tanks wound around immense wheels, turning the machineries of Chaos. It was almost like an infant version of Ghalmek, the daemonic forge monastery world, one of the great stronghold worlds of faith and industry of the Word Bearers, deep in the Maelstrom.