A huge roar of approval rose from the gathered, since many of their voices were also enhanced
by the daemons lurking within their souls.
“The Coryphaus honours us with this sacred duty.” Burias continued, which was met with
another roar from the gathered warriors.
“Do the Coryphaus proud, my brothers, and kill in the name of Lorgar!”
The gathered warriors roared the name of their daemon primarch, their voices mingling with
Burias’s bloodcurdling bellow, screaming to the heavens so that their lord might hear their devotion.
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The gathered Coteries intoned prayers to the dark gods as they climbed into their transport
vehicles. A pair of Land Raiders would lead the Rhino attack column and the assault ramps of the
monstrous tanks hissed as they slammed open to receive the warriors honoured to be carried within.
Engines revved in anticipation and the lascannon turrets of the Land Raiders swivelled as the
daemon spirits controlling them expressed their impatience.
“The smoke the Imperials use blocks our sight, but it blocks theirs as well, Burias. Go forth.
Tackle them head on. They will not see you coming.”
Burias snarled a wordless reply. Drak’shal was rising within him. With a final nod, he turned
and jogged towards the awaiting Land Raider. Before the assault ramp had even hissed completely
closed, the column of tanks roared forwards, climbing the steep embankment quickly amid the
explosions of incoming barrage fire. Engines screamed as the massive Land Raiders reached the
apex of the climb and rose over the lip of the embankment before the tanks thumped down on the
other side. They rolled towards the enemy hidden behind a wall of smoke and ash that was drawing
closer with every falling barrage.
Drak’shal’s daemon essence pumped strength through his veins and his muscles strained within
his power armour.
To become one of the Anointed had been his dream since his inception into the Legion. He knew
that his relationship with Marduk had kept him from being embraced into the cult, for his prowess
was faultless. Long had it been a source of dishonour for Burias and he had at times hated the First
Acolyte for it. He had no idea what had occurred on the moon of Calite, but the hatred between
Marduk and Kol Badar had been palpable ever since.
Curse him and his feud with the Coryphaus! Burias thought. If the warlord would allow him to
be embraced into the cult of the Anointed then he would relish the opportunity and grasp it with
both hands.
The Coryphaus was right, the future of the First Acolyte was far from certain, and to throw his
support behind Marduk without consideration of this would be foolish. No, he would wait for the
right moment to make his decision about where his loyalties lay.
Such thoughts left him instantly as he heard the mechanised, insane whisperings of the Land
Raider cease for a moment. The vehicle’s machine-spirit had been merged with the essence of a
daemon upon the factory world of Ghalmek, bound within the casing of the tank by the fabricators
and sorcerers of the Legion with the aid of the chirameks.
“Entering the blind cloud, Icon Bearer,” said the drawling twin voices of the Land Raider’s
operators, warriors who had long ago become one with the machine.
The daemonic, mechanised whisperings of the tank began again, the voices agitated and excited.
“Command? Come in! Damn it!” swore the Valkyrie pilot. He could make no sense of the garbled
nonsense being broadcast through the vox system. His sensor arrays had turned to darkness minutes
earlier and he was flying completely without their assistance. Now the vox-caster was playing up
and he was completely cut off from the rest of the squadron, not to mention base command. Damn
it, he couldn’t even communicate with the drop-troopers behind him, for even the closed circuit
comm-transmissions of the unit were spewing nonsense.
He knew that the other Elysians were trying to make contact, but their voices morphed into
hellish, bestial screams and roars. He wondered if that was how his voice sounded to their ears.
The closer they got to the damned insane tower of the enemy, the more garbled and chaotic the
sounds became. He switched the system off, reasoning that he would rather hear nothing than that
hellish blare. Yet even with the systems disabled, his earpieces blared with the evil sound and he
slammed his fist into his helmet in desperation to get the insane noise out of his head.
You are all going to die, the voice said to him.
The Valkyrie was ripped apart as it was struck by anti-aircraft fire and the pilot was certain that
he heard laughter in his ears, even as the cockpit exploded into a billowing fireball.
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Tank Commander Walyon grinned as he stood in the cupola of his Leman Russ battle tank, the wind
and smoke blowing in his face. The lowered visor of his helmet protected his eyes, not that there
was anything to see as the tank thundered through the smoke.
He glanced out to either side. He could dimly make out only the closest tanks, but he knew that
there were scores of vehicles spread out on each wing. He was at the point of the arrowhead, roaring
towards the enemy, and his heart was racing.
He had been waiting for this day for decades. He knew that being a tank commander within the
Elysian ranks was regarded as a dubious honour; all good Elysians dreamt of attacking via dropship,
for that was the rhetoric drilled into the soldiers from day one. But tanks had always been
Walyon’s true love and he had accepted the post with relish. The tank company within the 133rd
was regarded as little more than a joke; few Elysian regiments even had a tank company. The other
officers regarded the position as a dead end and he knew they sniggered behind his back—
promotion out of harm’s way, they said. Waylon did not care, for within the ranks of the tank
company he had found his home.
However, what had followed was years of boredom and resentment. Time after time the 133rd
were launched into battle, but the armoured divisions were held back.
Finally, his time had come and he would be damned if he wasn’t going to enjoy it. He smiled
like a child given his first exhilarating trip on the harbour shuttle of his home city-hive of Valorsia,
and he screamed with exhilaration into the whipping wind.
Somewhere far overhead the Valkyries were disgorging their living cargos. Drop-troopers would
be falling through the atmosphere towards their target, the second line of the enemy’s defences.
Somewhere behind, the Gorgons of the Mechanicus were grinding forwards in the wake of his battle
tanks.
An echelon of low-flying Thunderbolt heavy fighters screamed overhead, dull shapes in the
haze, utilising the same cover of smoke as the battle tanks, and Walyon punched his fist in the air as
they passed, willing them on.
He grinned wildly, feeling as though he were screaming through a vacuum of white smoke. The
feeling was not unlike falling blindly through clouds on a combat drop, but this felt much more
secure, for he had a giant battle tank steed beneath him. Excitement building, he pulled out his
shimmering sabre and levelled it out in front. He felt like one of the daring cavalry marshals of
history and he screamed wordlessly, glorying in the sensation of speed.
That was when he saw the massive, red shape looming out of the smoke ahead of him, and the
next second of his life seemed to occur in horrifying slow motion. He dimly registered twin flashes
of searing white lascannons and the battle tank to his right exploded in a rising ball of black smoke.
Walyon ducked back within the cupola as heavy bolter rounds ripped across the hull of his tank.
The command tank’s driver must have seen the Land Raider at exactly the same moment and the
Leman Russ slewed to the side in an attempt to avoid the massive shape. The move was one of
desperation and instinct and the Land Raider turned into it, smashing into the side of the Leman
Russ at full speed.
The force of the impact slammed the battle tank onto its side with the sickening sound of
crunching metal. The front of the Land Raider rose up into the air like a looming monster of the
depths as the impact and its momentum lifted it. The Leman Russ rolled onto its top and the massive
traitor tank smashed down upon it, engines roaring as its tracks spun wildly, gaining no traction.
Metal screamed as it buckled beneath the weight of the giant and Walyon was buffeted from side
to side, smashing his head on the inside of the cupola, the hot taste of exhaust fumes in his mouth.
The next moments of his life were a blur as the Leman Russ rolled wildly across the salt plain,
flipping and finally coming to rest upright.
Dazed and shell-shocked, blood running from nose, Walyon called out weakly to the crew
within the tank. Pulling himself upright, wincing and feeling as if every bone in his body had been
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smashed by the severity of the impact, he looked across the smoky void of the salt plains. He
couldn’t see far, but now that the Leman Russ engine was dead, he could hear the roar of engines,
the chatter of gunfire, the heavy boom of battle cannons and the hissing scream of las-cannons.
Explosions rocked the earth and rising plumes of oily, black smoke and bright orange fireballs
pierced the haze. He coughed painfully, spitting blood, and he closed his eyes against the burning
pain in his ribs.
An enemy Rhino screamed out of the smoke and Walyon dimly saw Chaos Space Marines
standing in the open top of the vehicle, weapons raised. His vision was blurring before his eyes and
he barely saw the plume of white-hot plasma screaming towards him, nor the meltagun that blurred
the air as it fired upon his beloved tank.
Walyon died, his flesh burning and liquefying, and a moment later the Leman Russ exploded
violently, throwing the blackened hull into the air.
A battle cannon shell detonated on the flank of the Land Raider’s hull, spinning the behemoth to the
side, its momentum lost.
“Out!” roared Burias. “Lower the attack ramp!”
Leading the coteries from the Land Raider, desperate to get to grips with the enemy, Burias
swung his head from side to side as battle tanks roared past them. Snarling, he snapped off an
ineffectual shot with his bolt pistol.
One of the tanks spun amid a rising cloud of salt dust as its track was blown clear by a meltagun
shot and the coterie broke into a run towards the slowing vehicle, roaring to the heavens.
One of the tank’s side sponsons screeched as it rotated and unleashed its salvo into the Word
Bearers, ripping apart bodies. Burias leapt over the fallen warrior-brothers.
Drak’shal surged to the surface of the Icon Bearer’s being and his shape blurred as muscles
bulged within his power armour. Bunching his legs beneath him, he leapt through the air, landing
atop the Demolisher tank. He gripped the hatch atop the cannon turret and ripped it clear of its
housing in one brutal movement, wires and cables sparking as the metal was wrenched out of shape,
and he hurled it aside. Thumbing a pair of grenades into his hand, he hurled them into the exposed
interior before leaping from the tank.
The grenades detonated behind him, but his focus had fixed on something new, and he stared
into the impenetrable smoke cloud, his nostrils flaring. A giant shape appeared, roaring towards the
Word Bearers.
Larger than even a Land Raider, a super-heavy Gorgon transport vehicle loomed out of the
smoke. A giant, angled assault ram of thick metal protected its front, and the gunfire of the coterie
pinged off its surface. The metal turned molten beneath the touch of melta weaponry, but even that
was not enough to penetrate the thick armour.
Chattering gunfire ripped up the ground around the Coterie and a spray of autocannon shells
smashed Burias back a step. He felt his anger grow. Lascannons from the Land Raider pierced the
metal side of the massive super-heavy vehicle, but it did not slow, and Burias once again tensed his
leg muscles, making ready to spring.
With a roar, he leapt as the massive tank bore down on him and he landed on the upper side of
the assault ramp, the force of the impact causing him to hiss in pain. A second later, the Gorgon
slammed into the wreckage of the Demolisher, smashing the battle tank aside with contemptible
ease, nearly crushing Burias. He pulled himself up over the lip of the giant dozer blade. The vehicle
was open-topped and he snarled in pleasure as he saw the score of heavy battle servitors packed
within. Several were borne upon large tracked units, while others were bipedal, easily as large as a
Space Marine, held in place by large clamps around their waists. Autocannon fire slammed into one
of Burias’s arms, shattering the ceramite, and he lost his grip momentarily, sliding precariously.
With a roar he pulled himself up and, kicking off with one foot, he descended into the midst of the
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heavy Praetorian battle servitors. They raised their massive inbuilt weapon systems towards him,
though they were hampered by the tight confines of the Gorgon.
Spinning cannons screamed, the heavy calibre gunfire tearing armour and flesh from Burias-
Drak’shal’s body, but he was amongst them in an instant. The holding clamps hissed open, releasing
the Praetorians. Their immense weight and solid construction ensured they did not lose their footing,
despite the speed the Gorgon was travelling at. He ripped the augmented head from the shoulders of
one of the warriors as he landed, and protein rich, sickly, white synth-blood, sucrosol, sprayed out,
mixing with spurting oil and Burias-Drak’shal’s sizzling, scarlet vital fluids.
Another three possessed Chaos Marines launched themselves over the side of the Gorgon,
landing amidst the Praetorians, roaring their dedications to the Chaos gods. Chainaxes and power
swords rose and fell in bloody arcs and their bolt pistols barked as they fired into the tight press.
The enemy was all around him and Burias-Drak’shal lashed out blindly, ripping mechanical
arms from torsos and punching his talons through chests. The Praetorians were the most highly
advanced servitors created by the Adeptus Mechanicus, fitted with neuro-linked targeting processors
and enhanced combat brain-stem implants, as well as heavy weaponry and powerfully armoured
shells. They were easily a match for an Astartes warrior-brother.
One of the berserkers was clubbed to the ground by a heavy blow from a chaingun, mechanics
