There Is Only War Read online

  Roaming bands of greenskins claimed this part of the city. Squad Demetrian had abandoned the Chimera long before, in favour of stalking through the ruins and clearing a path for the Guard’s advance tonight.

  Argo heard the xenos trampling closer, around the corner. They muttered to each other in their guttural, swinish tongue. The Chaplain tasted bile in his mouth. Their inhumanity repelled him.

  He heard the bestial things pause in their lazy search, heard them snuffing at the air and grunting. They had his scent, he was sure of it, and his blood ran hot as he clenched his short combat sword in one hand, his bolter in the other.

  At his hip hung his deactivated crozius arcanum, the symbolic weapon of his role in the Chapter. Capped by an eagle-shaped maul fashioned from blackened adamantium, it was a fearsome bludgeon when sheathed in its crackling power field. Argo’s crozius had belonged to Ancient Amentus, one of the first Crimson Fist Chaplains; a founder of the Chapter from when the primarch divided the Imperial Fists Legion ten millennia before. Upon an arm-length haft of dark metal, the inscription Traitor’s Bane was written in High Gothic.

  He treasured the relic weapon, which still felt unfamiliar in his fists even after seven years. Against detritus such as these greenskins, his gladius was more than enough to suffice. He would not let the filthy blood of weakling xenos mar an honourable weapon dating back to the Great Crusade.

  The first of the creatures, alert now, came around the corner. In its fists was a collection of scrap that evidently served the greenskin as a firearm. Argo surged to his feet, superhuman reflexes enhanced even further by his armour, and before the ork could utter a sound, it was falling backwards with the hilt of the Chaplain’s gladius protruding from its eye socket.

  Argo rounded the corner to meet the others head-on and his bolter barked, spitting detonating shells into green flesh. Eleven of them. Each hulking figure was momentarily outlined by a flicker of light in his helm’s vision, cycling through target locks. But eleven was too many, even for an Astartes. In a flashing moment of anger, Argo cursed himself for not listening carefully to their breathing and trying to discern their numbers. It was his failing, he knew. He’d acted in rage, and now it was going to kill him.

  The brutish creatures ran at him even as they took fire, massive fists gripping jagged axes that were pieced together from vehicle parts and industrial machinery. Argo’s bolter cut down three orks as his targeting reticule flitted between weak points in the greenskins’ piecemeal armour.

  ‘You dare exist in mankind’s galaxy!’ Argo’s bolter spat its last shell which destroyed an ork from the jaw up. He clamped the weapon to his thigh with its magnetic seal and threw his fist forward, shattering the forehead of the first greenskin to come in range. ‘Die! Die knowing the Crimson Fists will cleanse the stars of your taint!’

  Axes slashed towards him, which Argo weaved to avoid. A step back took him within reach of the first ork he’d felled, and he snatched up his gladius from the wretch’s skull. Rivulets of dark blood slid along the silver blade, and the Astartes grinned behind his death’s head mask.

  ‘Come, alien filth. I am Argo, son of Rogal Dorn, and I am your death.’ The mob of orks ran in and Argo met them, the primarch’s name on his lips.

  ‘Break left.’

  The voice crackled over the vox and Argo obeyed instantly, throwing himself into a roll that scattered a dust cloud in the ruins of the building. He came up, blade in hand, just as the speaker joined him in the fight.

  The midday sun flashed from Toma’s iron shoulder guard as he hammered the greenskins from behind. His bolter disgorged a stream of shells that exploded on impact in bursts of clear, hissing liquid. As he fired one-handed, he plunged his gladius into the throat of the closest greenskin, giving it a savage twist to half-sever the creature’s head. Four of the orks fell back, the horrendously potent acid from Toma’s prized bolt rounds overriding even the orkish resilience to pain as it ate through their flesh like holy fire.

  All of this happened before Argo’s two hearts had time to beat twice.

  The last two orks leapt at the Fists to die in futility. Toma impaled the first through the chest, shattered its face with a brutal headbutt, and fired a single bolt at point-blank range into the alien’s temple. The skull gave way in a shower of gore as the explosive shell performed its sacred function. Gobbets of flesh and bone hissed as they span away, eaten by the mutagenic acid in Toma’s Inquisition-sanctioned ammunition.

  Argo grappled with the second ork, his gauntlets wrapped around the thing’s throat as it broke its thick nails scrabbling at his armour. He bore the howling greenskin to the ground, his weighty armour crushing the life from its chest as he strangled it in trembling fists.

  ‘Die…’

  The ork’s answer was to roar voicelessly, its red eyes burning with rage. The Astartes grinned in mimicry of his helm and leaned close to the thing’s face. His voice was a whisper through his vox-speakers.

  ‘I hate you.’

  Toma stood to the side, reloading his bolter and scanning the ruins for more foes. Argo’s skulled face pressed against the choking ork’s forehead. Orkish sweat left dark smears against his bone-cream faceplate.

  ‘This is the Emperor’s galaxy.’ With a final surge of effort, he squeezed with all his strength. Vertebrae popped and cracked under the pressure. ‘Mankind’s galaxy. Our galaxy. Know that, as your worthless life ends.’

  ‘Brother-Chaplain…’ Toma said.

  Argo barely heard. He let the creature fall dead and rose to his feet, savouring the taste of copper, bitter and hot, on his tongue. His rage had not killed him, after all. The enemy lay dead in great numbers.

  ‘Brother-Chaplain,’ Toma repeated.

  ‘What?’ Argo unclasped his bolter, reloading it now with the proper litany to the machine-spirit within.

  There was a moment when Argo was sure Toma would say something; chide him for letting his fury get the better of him and lead him into reckless combat. Despite the break with tradition and authority, Argo would have accepted the criticism from a warrior like Toma.

  Toma said nothing, but the silence passing between the two Astartes was laden with meaning.

  ‘Report,’ Argo said to break the quiet.

  ‘Imrich and Vayne report their section is clear now. Brother-Sergeant Demetrian reports the same.’

  ‘Resistance?’

  ‘Vayne and Demetrian described it as savage.’

  ‘And Imrich?’

  ‘He described it as thrilling.’

  Argo nodded. He was running low on ammunition, and knew the others must be as well.

  ‘Prepare for a withdrawal.’

  As Toma voxed Argo’s orders to the others, the young Chaplain looked out across the ruined city. Small by Imperial standards – large settlements were rare on an agri-world – yet the focus of so much destruction.

  On the other side of Southspire, the new warlord waited with the bulk of his horde. And in the heart of the city, the broken remains of the Cantorial Palace: the Fists’ true goal, surrounded by foes.

  Argo’s blood boiled as he spat a curse behind his mask. He wanted to press on. The palace was no more than a handful of hours away, but resistance from the roaming warbands was intense. With another squad of Astartes, just five more men, he’d have taken the chance. But alone, it was suicide.

  ‘What’s that noise?’ Toma said.

  Argo levelled his bolter. He’d heard it, too. Drums. The music of primitives, echoing across the city like the pounding heartbeat of an angry god.

  ‘It’s a warning.’

  The Imperial Guard advanced that night, and the weather turned bitter as if the heavens recognised the humans’ intent.

  Basilisks softened up the way ahead with relentless bombardments each hour. Ulviran was content to endure this halting advance, frequently cutting forward progress to
establish another artillery barrage that took an age to set up. He pored over maps and holo-displays in his Baneblade’s command room as Imperial guns pounded their own city into dust.

  The big push consisted of the surviving elements of the Radimir Third Rifles, Seventh Irregulars and Ninth Armoured. These were the so-called ‘Revenants’, named for the many times Radimir had replaced entire regiments due to losses against the greenskins in Segmentum Tempestus. Rebirth at the precipice of extinction was a blessing familiar to the Crimson Fists, and the Chapter had fought well with the soldiers of Radimir countless times across the centuries.

  Hundreds of Guardsmen clad in the gunmetal grey of the Radimir Revenants marched alongside rattling Sentinels in the vanguard of the assault, flanked by Leman Russ battle tanks in half a dozen variants. Radimir was close to being a forge world in terms of its armoured exports. No Revenant regiment ever went to war short of armour support.

  The bulk of Ulviran’s forces followed the vanguard: six thousand men including a detachment of storm troopers serving as his ceremonial guard, riding alongside his Baneblade in eight black-painted Chimeras.

  At the rear of this main force came the artillery: Griffons and Basilisks, their punishing guns stowed and locked until the next time Ulviran brought the column to a halt and ordered them to set up a shelling storm kilometres ahead.

  Last of all came the rearguard, made of the lord general’s veteran Guard squads interspersed with auxiliary units, medical transports and supply trucks.

  The Fists’ Thunderhawk gunship remained back at the abandoned base camp at the city’s edge, ready to be summoned. For a short while, until Argo scattered them, Squad Demetrian marched in the vanguard of the force, forming the vicious tip of the Imperium’s conquering blade. In scything rain and howling winds, as the elements battered down upon the miserable Imperial advance, the war to retake Southspire began. The Fists soon bled away into the night, leaving Argo alone.

  Major Dace, who had been present in the Baneblade’s command room when Argo reported the Fists’ scouting run, couldn’t resist voxing the Chaplain now. Argo’s suit insulated him from the noise of the rain slashing against his ceramite armour, and he tensed his throat to activate his vox-bead as it chimed.

  ‘Brother-Chaplain Argo. Speak.’

  ‘This is Major Dace of the Revenants.’ Argo smiled as he heard the voice. The ritual processes that had moulded his body like clay, forming him into an Astartes, had given him a memory close to eidetic. It was known by most Imperial commanders who worked with Astartes that Space Marines possessed preternatural capacities for instant recollection.

  ‘Have we met?’ Argo asked with his half-smile in place. He didn’t let his amusement leak into his voice. It had the desired effect; Dace’s feathers were ruffled.

  ‘I don’t see your foretold resistance, Brother-Chaplain. All is quiet on the advance, is it not?’

  ‘I can still hear the drums,’ Argo noted. And he could, setting a distant rhythmic percussion to the thunder grinding across the sky.

  ‘I can’t,’ Dace said.

  ‘You are comfortably hidden in a tank, major.’ Argo closed the link and added, ‘And you are only human.’

  The Fists had been killing greenskins their entire unnaturally long lives. Ulviran, no stranger to the orkish hordes himself, trusted Argo’s belief that the drums pounded as a challenge to the Imperials. The new warlord, a curse upon his black heart, knew they were coming, and the drums of war beat to show he welcomed the coming bloodshed. The storm swallowed their noise now. Only the Astartes could make it out, and it was dimmed even to their senses.

  ‘Ulviran to all units,’ crackled the lord general’s hourly message. ‘Dig in for bombardment. Shelling to commence in thirty minutes.’

  Argo bit back a curse. Too slow, much too slow. His thoughts were plagued by the Thunderhawk full of digging equipment back at the base.

  ‘Brother-Chaplain?’

  The communication rune that flashed on his reddish lens display was, thankfully, not Dace. Imrich’s vital signs registered as almost a kilometre ahead.

  ‘How goes the scouting, Brother Imrich?’

  ‘Lord,’ Imrich responded, speaking quietly and clearly. ‘I’ve found the kine.’

  ‘So have I, sir.’ This was Vayne, a kilometre to the west.

  ‘Contact,’ voxed Demetrian. His readouts pinned him in the south.

  Argo looked over his shoulder, at the procession of ocean-grey tanks with rain sluicing off their hulls.

  ‘Numbers?’ he asked them all over the squad’s shared channel. The weather was banishing vox integrity, masking all the words in a haze of crackles and hisses.

  ‘I count over a thousand, easily,’ Vayne said. ‘Perhaps two.’

  ‘Same,’ added Demetrian.

  ‘I’ve got more. I’ve got lots more.’ Imrich sounded overjoyed. But then, knowing Imrich, he probably was. ‘Twice that number, I’m sure of it. If we hear from Toma,’ Imrich added, ‘we’re in a world of trouble.’

  The Deathwatch specialist had been sent to the south, stalking a good distance behind the rearguard.

  The vox clicked live again. ‘Brother-Chaplain, come in.’ said Toma. The rest of his message was cut off by Imrich’s delighted laughter.

  With a cold feeling of metallic-tasting finality in his throat, Argo voxed the lord general.

  Ulviran listened without hesitation. He ignored Dace’s complaints and pulled the column into a still-advancing defensive spread that, admirably, took less than half an hour to form. No small feat for that many soldiers and vehicles. The organisational aspects of war were where Ulviran most prided himself. An orderly army was a victorious one. The faster orders were obeyed, the more men survived. It was a simple mathematic he liked, and had a talent for putting it into practice.

  ‘The shelling,’ Argo voxed to him, ‘is doing nothing. The warlord has put significant force into the city against us, and the horde ahead is falling back to draw us in.’

  Ulviran glared down at the hololithic display of the city projected onto the large table. His Baneblade rumbled as it rolled on.

  ‘We’re surrounded.’

  ‘If we stop now, lord general, we will be. The pincers will close around us the moment we halt. If we push on at speed, we can make it to the Cantorial Palace and engage the forward elements before the rest of the noose can close around our throats.’

  Ulviran liked that. Turn the ambush into an attack.

  ‘Strike first, strike hard, and prepare to repel the rest of the attackers once the main force is crushed.’ It sounded good. It sounded right. But…

  ‘I am going purely on your word for this, Brother-Chaplain.’

  ‘Good,’ the Astartes replied, and ended the link.

  ‘The Cantorial Palace?’ voxed Demetrian.

  ‘Yes. Squad, form up. We’re taking the prize.’

  The Cantorial Palace had been the seat of the planetary governor, and a masterpiece of gothic design; as skeletally, broodingly Imperial as would be expected.

  All that remained was a series of shattered walls and a small mountain of rubble, where once battlements and ridged towers had risen around a central bastion. The previous greenskin warlord had claimed it as his lair, until the Crimson Fists had dissuaded him of the notion four months ago. Refuting his claim of ownership involved razing the building to the ground with infiltrating sappers, and even then, the gigantic xenos clad in its primitive power armour had survived to claw itself free from the smoking rubble.

  Imrich had battled the warlord in the stone wreckage, finally taking its head after a long and bloody duel. He wore Warlord Golgorrad’s skull on his bandolier, giving it pride of place on his chest.

  The ork forces of this nameless new warlord evidently favoured the former site of battle. It was to be the anvil upon which the Imperial forces would be crushed by the
flanking hordes.

  Ulviran’s army did not march sedately to a doom surrounded by foes. Time was of the essence, and the Revenants powered on to meet the larger force ahead. Men held to the side of speeding tanks and rode atop vehicle roofs. Within the hour, the Guard spilled with overwhelming force into the great plaza district where the Cantorial Palace’s bones jutted from the ground.

  The armoured fist of the Revenant advance crashed into the scattered greenskin lines. Rubble rained down as tanks unleashed the fury of their cannons, and a staccato chorus of heavy bolter fire filled the air between the thunder of main guns. Lacking entrenchments, the orks counter-charged the armoured column, finding walls of Imperial Guard coming to meet them. Las-fire sliced across the night, illuminating the battlefield like some hellish pre-dawn in scarlet sunlight.

  The rain lashed down on troopers in cold-weather gear as they fired in disciplined ranks, and the orks still came on in a roaring wave that drowned out the sound of thunder above.

  Imperial records came to know this battle as the Night of the Axe, when the Radimir regiments on Syral were decimated by the hordes of xenos creatures they faced. Losses stood at forty-six per cent, utterly damning Lord General Ulviran’s planned big push to face the new warlord that still lay in wait on the other side of the city. The Guard was bloody and beaten, and although thousands survived the assault, it was nowhere near enough to storm the warlord’s position with any hope of success. The Radimir’s one slim hope of survival on the kine-infested world – to strike the warlord down and cast the hordes into disarray – was gone. In turning the ambush into an attack of their own, the Guard had delayed their destruction but not avoided it.

  However, for the purposes of the Crimson Fists, the Night of the Axe was neither the most critical juncture in the war for Syral, nor was it even recorded in their rolls of honour despite the harvest of lives reaped by Squad Demetrian of the Fifth Company.