Dark Hunters: Umbra Sumus

TWENTY-THREE

Pugna Ultima

The citadel of Askai on Ras Hanem had been built nigh on a millennium before.

Once, in that long-lost era of time before the coming of men to this part of the galaxy, there had been a hill beside a bright, free-flowing river, the Koi. The hill had overlooked the badlands to the west, and the rolling savannahs beyond. This terrain had come into being only in the last few thousand years; before that there had been thick forest and emerald-bright jungle carpeting the planet, and under the trees had walked the eldar.

The cataclysm that had hurled Ras Hanem and the Kargad system through the galaxy had seared the surface of the once fecund world, devastating flora and fauna, and destroying the ancient civilisation which had named the planet Vol-Aimoi. The eldar had fled the unstable system in a massed fleet of their beautiful ships, but not before burying the device which protected their dead deep in the earth of Vol-Aimoi.

They had meant to come back and retrieve it once the turmoil had died away, to begin again and rebuild their world. But, beset by the Chaos fleets and armies which teemed out of the newly opened Eye of Terror, harried by the advancing crusades of the Imperium of Man, they had never managed to return. And so, even their long memories had lost all knowledge of the forgotten world, even as its last exiles were hunted down and destroyed in a hundred battles over a thousand years. The eldar who had lived on Vol-Aimoi became extinct, and all record of them was lost in those tumultuous centuries.

Millennia passed. Men arrived near the star they named Kargad, and took the system as their own.

They landed at the foot of the hill, beside the river, and on that hill they built their first base, while they surveyed the planet and discovered the deep-buried riches of its ores. They built their houses and workshops and fledgling manufactoria under the fortifications on the hill, and grew in number.

The years came and went, and the settlement by the river grew into a city, and spawned others across the world that men now named Ras Hanem. The city was constantly enlarged, rebuilt and redesigned, until it was decided that Ras Hanem was important enough to warrant a major construction project. The fortress on the hill was dismantled and the hill itself was enlarged, built higher in a gigantic feat of engineering until it became a mountain, faced with igneous stone, braced with adamantium, hollowed out and reared up into a mighty bastion full of guns – a city to itself.

Thus was the citadel of Askai born, and it had stood for a thousand years, home to the ruling house of Ras Hanem, the Riedlings, who in turn were merely descendants of the first explorers and traders set human foot on the planet.

The citadel was a thousand metres tall, and within its hollow heart tens of thousands of people lived and worked and hoped and hated and loved and died, while below them the city of Askai sprawled out at its feet, and underneath it the mines of the Administratum delved ever deeper, seeking the precious ores which fed the war machine of mankind.

Until the Punishers came.

Now, the citadel of the Riedlings was under siege. It was the last remaining outpost of the Imperium of Man in the entire system, and though it had originally been built with such trials in mind, the long years of peace had atrophied many of the systems and mechanisms of the defence.

Manufactoria buried in the mountain’s foundations had fallen into disuse because the Armaments District with its massive production lines was only a few kilometres away. Food stores and water purification plants had been neglected under the latest and last scion of the Riedlings, and the defences had been allowed to run down in the years before the present catastrophe.

It was in this place that Mortai Company and its allies awaited the final assault of the massed Chaos hordes.

‘Si vis pacem, para bellum,’ Brother Malchai said. ‘If you wish for peace, prepare for war. A proverb more ancient than the Imperium itself. The men who governed this planet might have done better to learn such ancient wisdom.’

Outside, the endless thump of the siege guns went on, a noise they had ceased to notice. It was part of the music of their lives, as unremarkable as the hot, humid air they breathed.

The blast doors of the citadel had been shut, and the fortress-mountain had closed itself off from the world, and the fury that was outside. The stone slopes of the mountain thundered with the endless bombing runs of the Stormbirds, and down at the gates, the Punishers were still trying to batter their way through the massive adamantium defences, like a bull charging at a cliff face. They had not stopped for twenty-six days, now, and the ancient gates of the citadel were still intact, but the stone in which they were embedded was crumbling away under that relentless barrage.

‘Brother Heinos,’ Jonah Kerne said. ‘How long do you give it before they break through?’

The Techmarine looked up at the vast gleaming mechanisms which upheld the stark adamantium of the gates. The air before him was full of dust, but the specialised auspex built into his helm saw through it, scanned the microscopic and not so microscopic cracks in the metal and stone.

‘I estimate that given three more days of this, the surrounding material will lose all integrity. The gates will not break, but what holds them in place will crumble.’

‘Three days!’ Fornix exclaimed. ‘Well, it’s good to be forewarned.’

‘What about our repairs?’ Brother Malchai asked. ‘General Dietrich has had his engineers all over these gates day and night for the last four weeks.’

‘It is the larger area that is in question,’ the Techmarine told him implacably. ‘It cannot be adequately repaired unless this entire section of the mountain is demolished and rebuilt. As it is, captain, I recommend that we abandon this section of the lower fortress. It has become unstable and could collapse of its own accord at any time.’

Kerne walked away from his brethren and stared up at the tall gates. They had been shored up from within time after time, and rockcrete had been poured around the massive hinge-supports, but outside the Punishers had brought up two colossus cannons and they had been pounding the citadel unceasingly.

‘It matters not,’ he said at last. ‘We can retreat all the way up to the summit of the citadel if we like, but eventually they will smash their way through every gate and barricade. As long as those heavy guns are out there, we can only postpone the inevitable so long.’

Four weeks of this, sitting like a rat in a trap, listening to the host baying outside, enduring the airstrikes, listening to those two damned siege guns hammering like great fists on the sides of the citadel.

Kerne looked up. Dust was trickling down from the basalt and granite of the chamber ceiling, thirty metres above, and the lights were flickering, dimming to yellow and then springing to half-brightness again.

This is not how I want to die: cornered in a cave.

Twenty-six days of this. They had beaten off raptor-landings on the very slopes of the upper citadel, had seen the governor’s palace reduced to ruin by endless bombing. The blast doors of the gun-caverns were plastered with fire every time they were opened, but they had taken a terrible toll all the same.

‘We must destroy those siege guns,’ he said aloud. ‘The enemy have not subjected us to orbital bombardment because they want the citadel intact, or as near as they can get to that. They want a way in – they don’t want to level the place. In that is our hope.’

He turned around, and looked at his brothers. Fornix, his red eye gleaming in the gloom. Malchai, pale, glabrous and severe as the skull-shaped helm he carried. Kass, his eyes dark, his face aged beyond its years by the continual psychic attacks of the last weeks.

‘We have one other asset they do not expect. The Thunderhawks are still intact, within this very fortress. We can use them to mount a sally. We will attack them from the air – they will never expect that.’

‘Their colossus guns are void-shielded,’ Malchai said, frowning. ‘Even our gunships would be unlikely to damage them, captain.’

‘I did not speak of gunship attacks, Brother Malchai. I intend to lead a team of our brethren outside in person to spike those guns.’

‘Jonah,’ Fornix said, ‘there is no way back from such a mission.’

‘I am aware of that, first sergeant.’

Fornix nodded, and smiled. ‘Very well. It will be diverting at least, after all these weeks of peace and quiet.’

‘Fornix, I will need you to stay here, to take over command of Mortai in my absence.’

Fornix scratched his head. ‘Brother, I am coming with you. You can, of course, order me to stay – but if you do, I will disobey that order.’

They looked at one another. It was not a test of wills, more a sharing of memories.

Finally, Kerne said: ‘Brother Malchai, you will command in my absence.’

The Reclusiarch bowed his head. ‘You really mean to do this thing, captain?’

‘I am set on it.’

‘Are you trying to atone for your misdeeds, Jonah – is that it?’

Kerne stared coldly at Brother Malchai. ‘You may ascribe to me whatever motive you wish, Malchai. It is a sound tactical move.’

‘Which any one of your sergeants should be able to carry out. Mortai’s commander does not have to risk himself this way.’

‘I will be needed on this mission, Jord. I know it.’

Malchai passed his gauntlet over his scalp, as though wiping it clean. He nodded. ‘Perhaps it is the best way,’ he admitted in a low voice. When he raised his eyes to meet Kerne’s there was real regret in his face.

‘I will see to it that Mortai survives,’ he said.

‘I know you will, brother.’

‘Captain.’ Elijah Kass spoke up. ‘I also will accompany you on this mission if I may. I believe that my abilities will be useful to you out there.’

Kerne considered the young Librarian. ‘The Chaos warleader, who directs all this – you can feel him, can’t you, Elijah?’

‘I think that you will need defences other than bolter and power armour to sustain you beyond the walls of this fortress, captain. That is my role, and I wish to fulfil it.’

‘All right then, Brother Kass, you and Fornix shall come with me. And Brother Heinos – we will need his expertise to sabotage the void shields and destroy the guns.’

‘Who else do you want?’ Fornix asked.

‘This will be short-range, dirty work. I want the best close-quarter fighters in the company, Fornix.’

‘Orsus then, and Finn March. How many others?’

‘How many of us are left?’ Kerne asked gently. He knew, but he wanted to hear it anyway.

‘We have thirty-two unwounded brethren remaining, Jonah. For this mission I would recommend taking out at least half of those.’

Fifteen Space Marines, give or take.

‘Three half squads then,’ Kerne said. ‘Under March, Orsus and yourself. I want them armed with chainswords and as many power weapons as we can find – flamers also.’

‘When?’ Brother Malchai asked.

Kerne paused, and listened to the unending sounds of war which rose and fell beyond the thickened sides of the fortress-mountain. ‘We will need time to prep the Hawks. I want three – one for transport, and two for ground-support. A Space Marine pilot for the transport only – we still have enough fleet pilots to man the others.’ He stopped again, turning it over in his mind.

‘The sun is going down outside, brothers. We will use the night to prepare ourselves, and attack with the dawn.’

The group of Space Marines was silent.

‘One last thing,’ Kerne said at last. ‘Have Dietrich and the eldar farseer meet with me at once. We had best keep our allies informed of our plans.’

Brother Malchai’s face twisted in disgust at the word allies, but he said nothing, and walked away.

‘I wanted to tell you both of the morning’s operation because it relates closely to both your commands,’ Kerne said to Dietrich and Te Mirah.

They stood a metre apart, the gnarled Imperial Guard General, and the tall, slender xenos. They did not look at one another, and Dietrich had one hand on the holster of his pistol.

‘If I am successful, then the enemy will have lost the most potent weapon in his armoury. The citadel will be able to withstand assault for some time to come – time which the relief forces still need to come to our aid.’

‘If your people took to the warp, they might be here already,’ Te Mirah said.

‘They would have had to gather together a fleet formidable enough to battle the one in orbit,’ Kerne told her. ‘The Dark Hunters alone do not possess that capability, but we have sworn allies in other Chapters of our Adept who do. I do not doubt that they are coming, but it would be a miracle for them to arrive so soon.’

‘Miracles happen because men make them happen,’ Dietrich said doggedly. ‘In any case, we will fight on here until the end, whatever and whenever it might be.’

Kerne set a hand on the officer’s shoulder. ‘I expected no less from you, general. Your conduct during this whole war has been of the very highest standard, and your men have added a worthy battle-honour to their colours. I know you and they will not let me down.’

Dietrich stiffened, and saluted.

‘And my people, captain?’ Te Mirah asked. ‘What do you expect of them?’

‘I am leaving a report with my Reclusiarch, for the eyes of the Chapter Master only,’ Kerne told her. ‘It details the part you played here on Ras Hanem, and the aid you gave us in the planet’s defence. I have requested that your people should be allowed to leave this system in peace, once reinforcements arrive.’

‘And will your superiors accede to your request, do you think?’

‘I do not know,’ Kerne said honestly.

Te Mirah smiled. ‘I suppose I shall have to be content with that. In any case, my warriors and I are as much prisoners here as the rest of you, and the enemy which surrounds this fortress hates my kind almost as much as it hates yours. There is nothing else for it – we will remain here and fight, until the end.’

‘I thank you for that,’ Kerne said formally.

‘Your superiors will not thank you for what you have done here – you know that. Your association with me will seem close to heresy in their eyes.’

‘That is a problem for another day,’ Kerne said with a shrug. ‘My task is to preserve this fortress.’

‘Even at the cost of your own life.’

‘It is what I was made for,’ Kerne told her. And there was nothing more to be said.

The cold season was moving on, and the mornings were not quite as chill and dark as they had been. The colossus guns halted their firing for a few hours before every dawn so that their crews might perform essential maintenance and reset their aiming mechanisms, which the concussion of the endless barrage shook off target.

That last morning, as the Kargad star rose above the Koi-Niro Mountains in the east of the world, a series of massive portals opened in the upper slopes of the citadel, and from those openings there uttered the roar of Mars pattern turbofans spinning to full power.

The teeming host of the Punishers looked up into the brightening sky to see three Thunderhawks erupt out of the side of the mountain above them like startled birds. They plunged down in arrowhead formation, the two wingmen opening up on the ground forces with sponson-mounted heavy bolters and lascannons, while the central craft extended its landing gear and touched down just within the encampment which housed the colossus cannons.

It came down with a roar of dust and fire, and the front ramp dropped at once. Out of the forward hold a group of Space Marines emerged, firing bolt pistols and heavy flamers as they came. When they were all out, the Hawk lifted off again, spraying bolter fire at the astonished denizens of the surrounding camps and dugouts of the enemy.

The other two gunships swooped round in a shrieking arc at low level, and dropped a series of iron bombs on the lines leading up to the colossus encampment, massive fountains of earth and fire erupting in their wake. They left a trail of chaotic destruction behind them, and then soared up into the sky once more to make another run.

But on their second pass the Punishers had collected their wits and began to return fire. The sky became alive with the fiery blossoms of anti-aircraft ordnance. Lascannon beams sizzled skywards, pale in the growing sunlight, and a hail of bolter rounds were flung up from the ground by hundreds of the foe.

The armour of the Thunderhawks shrugged off the light arms, but one was struck by a krak missile under its port wing and at once it jerked askew in the sky, trailing a thick tube of smoke. It still made its second pass, dealing out death and murder in a wide swathe, but it was slower now, and targeted even more fiercely by those below it. The belly of the craft was blown out by a second strike, and the Hawk shuddered in the sky and plunged to the ground in a spiralling cartwheel of massive secondary explosions. In its death throes it sent a Chaos Dreadnought flying through the air like a shattered doll.

The two other Thunderhawks were caught in a net of fire. They pulled up, still strafing the enemy on the ground, but so many rounds were impacting upon them that they were almost invisible in welters of smoke and flashing detonations.

The Dark Hunters forged towards their goal, ignoring the drama in the sky above. They burst through the scattered defenders of the colossus guns like a mailed fist punching through plywood, and were under the shadow of the massive siege weapons within minutes of landing. The surrounding Punisher companies were caught off balance by this wholly unlooked-for attack. Many were unaware that the Hunters were among them; most were still staring at the sky and blasting off tons of ammunition in feral rage.

Kerne caught the arm of a Chaos champion as the armoured warrior sought to brain him with a blow of his power sword. He stabbed his chainsword up, shunting it through the ceramite and fibre-bundles of his enemy until he found the vitals, and the labouring blade churned out the Punisher’s innards in a black spray of shredded viscera.

Around him, grenades were going off, and a promethium blast embroiled a trio of Punisher warriors in a wall of flame. They danced and wriggled in it blindly until Finn March’s squad cut them down with bolt pistol fire.

‘More coming up on the right,’ Fornix said on the vox. ‘Brother Pharnus, cover that arc with the heavy bolter.’

‘Heinos, find the void generators,’ Kerne told the Techmarine. ‘Hunters, give me a perimeter. We must hold them until the thing is done.’

The last Thunderhawk was finally shot out of the sky above them. It careered crazily through the air, but the pilot had enough control of its course to make sure it came down in a dense mass of the enemy. Its destruction wiped out half a Punisher company, and threw up a wall of flame to the south of Kerne’s position.

Brother Heinos’s servo-arm extended. He crouched close by the colossus guns and began tinkering with a series of corroded metal containers from which thick cables snaked. Sparks flew, and the blue flame of his fyceline torch blazed brighter than the sunlight.

‘Primitive,’ he said with contempt as he worked, utterly oblivious to the fighting going on around him.

‘How long, brother?’ Kerne asked him.

‘A few minutes, captain.’

‘Make sure that’s all it is. Brother-Sergeant March, watch your left. Enemy company closing in.’

The Thunderhawks had done their job; the immediate area of the colossus encampment had been blasted clear of the enemy, and in the confusion the Punishers were still not entirely aware of what was going on. But many of the nearest warbands were close enough to see the hated Adeptus Astartes in their midst, and these formations surged forwards with a collective bellow of frenzied hate.

‘They are being directed,’ Elijah Kass said. ‘I feel the will that shapes them. It is very close, now.’

‘Incoming on all sides,’ Fornix said calmly, flexing his power fist. ‘Brothers, today is a good day, a glad day. On this bright morning, we will show this scum how the Dark Hunters conduct themselves on a battlefield. Umbra Sumus.’

‘Umbra Sumus,’ the chorus came back.

And then the first ranks of the Punishers slammed into them.

Instinct and training took over. The enemy warriors in their loathsome approximations of Space Marine armour crashed roaring into the Dark Hunters like an avalanche of unadulterated murder. So intent were the Punishers on coming to grips with their foes that they were getting in one another’s way.

The Dark Hunters shot them down as they closed, kicked them back, shot them again, and then swept out the snarling chainswords. The first wave died there, and their bodies became entangled with the feet of the second.

Grenades went off, bright flashes of deadly white-hot shrapnel that clinked and bit their armour. Out of the corner of his eye, Kerne saw one of Fornix’s pauldrons blown clean off his shoulder, but Mortai’s first sergeant never even paused. He reached out with his power fist, grasped a Punisher by the skull, his fingers sinking into the enemy warrior’s helm, and threw him into the faces of those behind them. He was laughing over the vox as though it were all some enormous joke. His bolt pistol was blackened with firing, and the cameleoline had been scored off his much-patched armour in a dozen places, to show both Hunters blue and shining ceramite beneath.

‘Do you remember me, you scum? I am Fornix of the Dark Hunters. I am your death!’

Brother Kass was beside Fornix in the line, fighting like a man possessed. The psychic hood above his helmet was glowing with blue light, and he wielded a chainsword two-handed, swinging it back and forth in a blur.

They fought with the absolute purity of certain death, something like joy in the knowledge that they were facing hopeless odds, but they were exactly where they were supposed to be, and there was nothing else to think about except that activity which they were best at: killing. They slaughtered the enemy with the vicious economy of veterans, cutting down the Punishers as though the charging foe were nothing but a crop to be reaped. The cameleoline paint on their arms ran dark with blood.

But they were not invincible.

First one, then two, then a third of Kerne’s brothers went down, swamped by foes that grappled them to the ground before their fellows administered the killing blows.

As the dwindling circle of Hunters was driven in towards the siege guns, so the melee grew ever more tight and murderous. Kerne saw Sergeant Orsus go down, swinging his chainsword to the last. The sergeant carved a tall Chaos champion clear in two and raised the bloody weapon to the sky with a gargle of triumph. Other Punishers closed in on him and bore the big warrior bodily to his knees. He disappeared in a squirming scrum of bodies. Two seconds later a grenade went off where he had been, and the struggling Punishers were blown apart.

The circle still held, but barely. Kerne stepped back from it a moment.

‘Brother Heinos!’

‘The shield is down, captain. I am laying charges in the breeches of the guns.’

‘Make sure of them, Heinos. There will be no second chances today.’

They fought on, half of them down now. The Punishers had to climb over mounds of their own dead to come at them, and the Dark Hunters took another step back and opened up with bolt pistol and flamer at point-blank range.

Elijah Kass held out one hand as though he were handing a gift to the foe, and from the fingers of his gauntlet there streaked blue-white veins of light. These sank into the Punishers in front of him, and the Chaos warriors stopped in their tracks and began to scream and tear at their armour. Smoke rose from cracks that webbed across the metal, and they toppled, stinking like burned meat.

Kerne fired off magazine after magazine from Biron Amadai’s ancient sidearm, the rounds streaking out to blow chunks off the oncoming enemy, red clouds of blood and metal erupting out of the struggling bodies before him. He bared his teeth in a rictus of hatred inside his helm.

All his centuries of training and experience drew together in him and kindled a prowess his foes could not hope to match; he shot the enemy, stabbed him, punched him aside, crushed skulls with the butt of the heavy bolt pistol, lifted his adversaries bodily and hurled them aside. His feet were sinking in a growing mire of muck and blood and other nameless things, and he trod on the bodies of his own brethren unknowing in the thick press of the fight.

He watched the sigils that signified his brothers fighting around him wink out one by one on his helm display. And still the survivors fought on, and kept to their feet, and somehow held the line.

Two massive explosions went off behind him, so close together that they merged into one. For a second his auto-senses shut down entirely to protect him. He was momentarily deaf and blind. The shockwave staggered him, and he felt the heavy blow of metal shards thump his armour.

Then his auto-senses were back online, and he heard Brother Heinos.

‘Charges have been detonated. The guns have been spiked.’

He turned around and saw the Techmarine standing behind him. The servo-arm had been ripped from his back, and loose wires were fizzing and sparking on Heinos’s spine.

‘It is accomplished, captain,’ Heinos said calmly. And then a bolter round smashed into the Techmarine’s head, blasting out the back of his helm. Heinos went to his knees, and then fell onto his side in the bloody muck.

‘Mortai!’ Kerne called out across that deadly space. ‘On me – close on me!’

There were perhaps seven or eight of them still standing. Fornix was there, and Finn March, and Elijah Kass. They fought back to back, grunting with effort, a tiny island in a sea of foes. Kerne was beaten to his knees by a power hammer wielded two-handed, and Fornix broke the shaft of the weapon with a sweep of his power fist and punched its owner into ruin. He helped Kerne to his feet again.

‘Hard work, eh, Jonah? But we’ll rest soon enough.’

Once again, Elijah Kass punched out his fist, and the bright light flickered out of it, a flash that hurled several of the foe backwards. Then he swung his chainsword at them. But slower now; the Librarian seemed almost exhausted.

‘Hold!’

The voice rang out clear across the battlefield, as loud as a clap of thunder.

The ranks of Punishers seemed to shudder. They stopped, and their insane yowling died down to a low rancid muttering.

Incredibly, the mob that surrounded the Space Marines lowered their arms, and the pressure slackened – they backed away. The ring about the Dark Hunters opened up.

The battlefield fell almost silent.

‘What new trick is this?’ Kerne said quietly to Brother Kass.

The Librarian was stooped, breathing hard. ‘He’s here, the leader. He has come.’

‘Excellent,’ Fornix said. ‘Things were becoming a little tedious.’

‘Reload, brothers,’ Jonah Kerne told them. ‘Whatever happens next, we must be ready.’

They changed magazines in their bolt pistols. One of them, Brother Galen of Novus Company, picked up the heavy bolter from the ground and checked the belt. Finn March scavenged for ammunition, and Brother Kass bent slowly and lifted a flamer from the hands of the dead.

The ranks of the Punishers parted in two waves, the warriors jostling each other, still muttering in that low insane tone. There was fear in the noise, but also a kind of expectation, as though they were children about to witness a marvel.

And what came striding up through their opened ranks was, in its own way, a marvel indeed.

It was a Space Marine in shining white, red-chased armour, taller than Jonah Kerne. The armour was of ancient design, a Mark V suit such as had been used during the Great Heresy thousands of years before. It was covered in molecular bonding studs, and the chest of the wearer was ringed with cabling.

The approaching warrior wore no helm. His face was stern, even noble, and his head was shaved save for a single scalp-lock which fell over one ear. As he drew close, they saw upon his cheeks the ritual scars of Mundus Planus, home of the White Scars.

But noble though his countenance was, as the newcomer halted before them, Kerne and his brethren saw that his eyes were entirely black, filled with the darkness of the warp.

‘My brothers,’ he said, and he held out his hands as though to welcome them, ‘how did it come to this?’ His voice was low, melodic, and beguiling.

Elijah Kass gripped the flamer he held until the metal of the weapon creaked in his fists.

‘Abomination,’ he hissed. ‘I know you. I know what you are.’

‘You know nothing, little Elijah. I have tracked your mind since first you came to this world, and I have mapped out every vestige of mediocrity within it. Hold your tongue and let your betters speak.’

Kass swayed. ‘Captain – it is a daemon–’ And then he ground his teeth and shut his eyes.

‘He is mistaken,’ the strange Space Marine said. ‘I am no daemon, captain Jonah Kerne, oh my brother. I am one of you. I was born a White Scar. I fought with my Legion for years uncounted. I was there when that Legion was made into Chapters, and when the Dark Hunters were born I was already old. The genes of mighty Jaghatai are buried in me, as they are in you. We are brethren, captain.’

‘Who are you?’ Kerne asked.

‘I was once called Gull Khan. I have other names now, but there was a time when I, too, commanded a company of Legiones Astartes. Back before my children called to me–’ he spread his arms, smiling, and around him the vast host of the Punishers growled like beasts.

‘And now I am come here to this system, to claim a home for myself and my orphans…’ He looked up at the sky, almost as though he had lost the thread of his thought, and a frown creased the calm imperturbability of that face.

‘He is false,’ Kass rasped, as though every word he uttered were an agony. ‘Do not listen to him, captain…’

‘I applaud your broad thinking, Jonah Kerne,’ Gull Khan went on. ‘There are not many of our kind who would have indulged the machinations of the eldar to the degree you have. Did you know that it was they who were jamming all your vox transmissions? We tried also of course, but they are so much better at it. And I take it they exacted a price for relaying your messages back to Phobian… how very clever of them – and how obtuse of you.’

Kerne said nothing. He did not know if this thing uttered truth or falsehood or a blend of the two, but something in him flared up in outrage all the same.

‘You were fooled twice, captain,’ Gull Khan went on. ‘Once by us, and once by the eldar witch who is now safe in the fortress at your back.’ He looked up at the smoking ruins of the colossus cannons, their barrels bent back like the petals of shattered flowers.

‘But you are certainly enterprising, all the same. I did not expect this move.’ Something in his face flickered just for a moment – it was a kind of doubt. Once again, he looked at the bright morning sky, as though he expected something to appear in it.

‘I give you a choice, now, brother.’ He came closer, and the Dark Hunters raised their weapons.

‘Join us,’ he said simply. ‘Just you, Jonah Kerne – join us now – walk across that line, and I will spare your remaining brethren, and whosoever else you wish to save. They can walk out of Askai with their weapons and their lives, and go whither they wish. I have no use for them, and no need to kill any more of your prized Mortai Company.

‘Take my hand now, and I swear by the Ruinous Gods that you shall have the highest of ranks in my armies, and you shall be treated with honour and respect.’

Jonah Kerne laughed, a genuine laugh of surprise. ‘Do you take me for a fool?’

Gull Khan’s eyes narrowed. ‘You must know that you have no hope. Even if by some miracle you were to prevail on this world, do you think that your Imperium would then forgive and forget? You allowed the eldar to spirit away a priceless relic of their race, one which, if delivered to your Administratum, might have held the key to their eradication. In fact, you handed it over to them freely, when it was in your actual possession. You will not be forgiven for that, captain. They will break you for it.’

‘Then let them break me when I’m dead,’ Kerne told him with contempt. ‘You mean to kill us all – get on with it. I have had enough of this pantomime.’ And he meant it. He was ready. Gull Khan had not told him anything he did not already suspect in his hearts. It was why he had led this forlorn hope. Brother Malchai had known that.

Gull Khan shook his head sadly.

‘You refuse my offer then.’

‘I do.’

‘Such a waste, captain.’ The tall, pale-armoured warlord drew a sword, a bright, wicked blade that sprang into crackling life as it rose in his hand.

‘I will indulge you with death at my own hands then, Dark Hunter. My children will hold back, if yours will. We shall engage blade to blade with honour.’

‘Very well.’ Kerne raised his battered chainsword and thumbed the power so that the engine coughed into life.

‘He is lying to you, captain,’ Elijah Kass said. ‘There is something else he is concealing from us – he is parrying every attempt I make to reach out.’

‘Do not fight him alone, Jonah,’ Fornix urged. ‘Let us all go into the dark together.’

‘Not this time, brother,’ Kerne said. He set a hand on the arm of his first sergeant, his brother, his friend.

‘Today, Fornix, I must go into the dark alone.’

They walked towards one another, two Space Marines: one in beautifully made damascened armour which was marked by hard combat and painted crudely with cameleoline, the other in perfect white purity, unmarked by blade or bolter, armour as unsullied as the day it was made.

As they drew closer, so their pace quickened, until they both broke into a run. A massive roar went up from the Punisher host which surrounded them as Jonah Kerne and Gull Khan came together in a ringing crash.

Elijah Kass shut his darkening eyes and bent his head. His hood glowed with sapphire light. Fornix took a step forward, his power fist cocked as though he meant to punch something in the very air before him. But he stopped as the Punisher warriors around them levelled their weapons, a hundred bolters aimed at his chest.

‘Emperor, bright Lord of battle, help him now,’ he muttered, and stood stock-still, watching.

The blades swung, Gull Khan’s power sword describing an arc of blinding light. It clinked off Kerne’s shoulder as he ducked, and left a smoking scar on the ancient pauldron.

The Dark Hunter wheeled, his chainsword licking out to bite on empty air as his adversary jerked back.

They circled each other.

‘I know you, Dark Hunter,’ Gull Khan said. ‘I know your kind better than they know themselves.’

He parried a blow, side-stepped and kicked Kerne in the back of the knee. Jonah staggered, then threw himself backwards to avoid the bright blade which swept through the air inches from his head. For a second the chainsword churned through the muck of the ground, throwing it up in a brown spray that speckled Gull Khan’s pristine armour. The Punisher warlord stepped back, and let his opponent rise.

‘The Dark Hunters thought they knew better than their parent Legion – they evolved new tactics, found new ways to fight–’ Gull Khan lunged in close. His blade caught Jonah Kerne on the hip, sank into the ceramite and smoked there a half-second before he jerked it free. Kerne knocked it aside, the chainsword teeth scrabbling on the smooth supercharged metal. Smoke rose from the engine at his weapon’s hilt.

‘They sought to perfect the art of war as they saw it. They sought to survive, above all else.’ Gull Khan grunted as he leapt forward again. He feinted with the sword, and then punched Kerne on the side of his helm, a heavy blow that knocked the Dark Hunters captain sideways. Kerne rolled in the mud while the bellowing triumph of the Punisher hordes rose around him. With preternatural speed he found his feet in time to parry another blow, but it knocked him backwards. The Chaos warriors who ringed the struggling duo stepped back, raising their weapons above their heads and cheering madly, as though this were sport laid on for their amusement.

Kerne rolled again as the power sword stabbed into the earth where he had been. Never had he moved so fast, and yet Gull Khan was faster still. He kicked Kerne in the back, so hard that a cable from his powerpack was dislodged. Red sigils sparked up on Kerne’s helmet-display. He rose to his feet, and charged forward again, launching a flurry of blows which drove his opponent back. The chainsword laboured and sparked – it scored a dark line in Gull Khan’s armour and carved off one of the shining studs which adorned it.

‘Your brothers sought to do no more than my children do,’ Gull Khan went on, backing away slowly, the power sword in front of him, mud sizzling off it, burning.

‘They sought to perfect themselves and their calling, to live and thrive in a terrible place–’ He dived in, his thrust parried, and he brought up the hilt of his sword to smash into Kerne’s helm, full in the pointed snout. The Corvus helm was smashed clear off Jonah’s head, the neck-joint cracked and broken. Kerne staggered, lashed out blindly with the chainsword, his head swimming.

‘To perfect one’s own abilities, to follow one’s calling with all the skill one can muster – that is a beautiful thing,’ Khan said. He watched as Kerne found his footing and shook his head clear.

‘It is the way of Slaanesh, who is my lord, and guardian. My god.’ Gull Khan advanced again. ‘Look what he has made of me, captain, and see what your Emperor has made of you.’

He charged in close again, knocked the chainsword aside with his armoured forearm, and sliced down with the power blade. The long shining length of it came down with shattering violence upon Jonah Kerne’s shoulder, burning through the ancient armour that Lukullus had once worn, slicing through ceramite and adamantium layers, finding the flesh within, carving the Dark Hunter’s arm from his body.

Kerne fell to his knees, blood ribboning out from his severed stump. Around them, the Chaos host yowled and shrieked with pleasure, firing their bolters into the sky. Fornix howled with them, but in despair and grief. Finn March held him back as Mortai’s first sergeant tried to lunge forward.

Kerne looked up at the Punisher warlord, and his eyes were clear. He smiled.

‘At least I die true to my Lord and my faith,’ he said, gasping. ‘You are nothing but traitorous scum, and your god is an abomination.’

For the first time, Gull Khan’s face changed. Anger flooded it. His mouth opened in a snarl, and as it did it seemed his features altered, blurred, revealing something else behind them. There was a glimpse of a contorted, bestial countenance in which broken fangs sprouted and snapped. Then the Punisher closed in, sword raised.

Kerne threw his chainsword at his adversary. It struck the power sword and knocked it askew even as Khan loomed in. Then he drew Biron Amadai’s bolt pistol from his side, and let himself fall flat. He rolled under Gull Khan’s legs, and raising the pistol he fired as fast as his failing strength could pull the trigger.

The rounds pounded up into Gull Khan’s armour, and the Punisher warlord shuddered with their impact. He stumbled, lurched to one side, and as he did Kerne followed him with the muzzle of the ancient bolt pistol. He put the last three rounds of the magazine into Gull Khan’s head, the muzzle of the weapon so close to his foe’s skull that it blackened the skin.

The Punisher’s skull disintegrated, blown apart. The black eyes were destroyed, blown from their sockets, and the lower jaw fell open with nothing above it but broken bone and mangled meat.

Jonah Kerne collapsed, chest heaving, beside the white-armoured corpse of his enemy. He lay on his back, listening as the stunned, disbelieving silence of the Punishers gave way to a vast roar of baffled fury.

He looked up at the sky. It is a good day to die, he thought.

With his fading sight he watched the bright vault of Ras Hanem’s sky become ever brighter, as though there were other suns up there beyond the blue.

And things falling in that brightness, dark shapes plummeting to earth and trailing vivid streams of smoke in their wake, a dazzling sight, mystifying.

‘Jonah – Jonah, can you hear me?’

The fighting was beginning again. The roar of bolter fire shook the air, and in it were larger echoing booms. He felt the very earth under his back tremble and shake.

‘Jonah, look at me.’

It was Fornix, his helm off, his red eye gleaming. He was cradling his captain in his arms.

Kerne could not speak. Even his enhanced biological systems could not cope with the massive loss of tissue. The power sword had taken off his arm at the shoulder and continued deep into the side of his chest, ruining a lung, clipping one of his two mighty hearts. He was drowning in his own blood.

Fornix levered his captain into a sitting position.

‘Do you see them, Jonah? Watch with me, my brother. They have come – our brethren have come, and others with them. They’re dropping into the city in their thousands. Do you see them, Jonah?’

He did. They were the last thing he saw, a glorious sight. Hundreds of drop pods were landing all around in the ruins, and out of them stormed a mighty host of the Adeptus Astartes, in Hunters blue and the livery of the other six Chapters. The Dark Sons were there, having left the Wendakhen campaign in obedience to their oath. And he could see the badges of the Brazen Fists, the Doomsayers, the Shadowhawks, and yet more.

Hundreds of Space Marines were pouring across the ravaged face of the city, slaughtering the leaderless and bewildered foe. And in the skies above them, Thunderhawks appeared, dozens of squadrons spitting fire, burning the enemy into the ground.

Thus did the Dark Hunters and their allies return to purge the world of Ras Hanem, in the Kargad system, in the nine hundred and eighty-second year of the fortieth millennium.