power halberds in compliance and left the command shrine.
His cogitator units had judged the potency of the weapons of the enemy and calculated the
likelihood of damage to the blessed Ordinatus. Any moderate risk of damage was to be avoided,
thus spoke the tenets, and he had previously determined not to advance the giant war machine until
the enemy forces had been pushed back by 7.435 Mechanicus standard units, back to the third
defensive tier.
Now he thought differently. He remodelled the algorithms of trajectory and manifest firepower,
and a flurry of numbers scrolled down the screens lining the walls of the command shrine.
If the energy of the rear void shields was redirected to the frontal arc then the probability of
success rose exponentially the more power that he diverted there. Such a thing may be deemed
heresy, for the STC explicitly stated the correct shield levels and to alter them was to ignore the
teachings of the elders. But if his mission on planet c6.7.32 was compromised then it would be of no
matter. He deemed the minor heresy a lesser evil than what would occur if the enemy breached the
walls of the xenos structure, and he began the complex calculations necessary to adapt the systems
of the Ordinatus to his will.
Scores of Valkyries were being ripped apart by the relentless anti-aircraft fire that speared up
through the roiling black clouds. Thousands of the Elysians drop-troopers were slaughtered as they
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plummeted down through the atmosphere at terminal velocity, but still others survived and Laron
prayed that the other storm trooper platoons were amongst them.
It was a baffling experience, to be falling alongside something so massive. They had launched
from their Valkyrie above the tower and he had been falling past it for the last few minutes. That
such a thing could be so high was inconceivable, the engineering impossible, but there it was in
front of his eyes. It made him feel physically ill and he could hear strange voices in his head. The
thing seemed to exert a gravitational pull of its own and he angled away from it, so as not to be
drawn too close.
“Keep your distance from the tower,” he said into his micro-bead, but the thing merely fed back
a blare of roaring, horrifying sounds in his ears and he doubted that any heard his order.
He angled further away from the tower, hoping that his storm troopers would follow his lead, but
even as he did so he felt something tugging at him, pulling him in closer, towards the hateful
construction.
He muttered a prayer to the Emperor and felt the pull slacken enough for him to angle as far
from the tower as was feasible while staying on target. The surface of the tower seemed to pulse and
waver, and he felt hot blasts of air spilling from it, disrupting his descent, bustling him from side to
side.
He was rapidly closing on the roiling, black smog clouds circling the tower and he was pleased
to have his rebreather mask. As soon as he hit the smoke he felt terror rise within him. There were
things within the oily cloud and they slashed at him with their claws, their red, glowing eyes burning
fiercely in the gloom as he screamed past them.
Wind whipped at him, drawing him off course, and he cried out as something raked a series of
deep cuts across his arms and chest. It was more from shock than pain, for his heavy carapace
armour ensured the wounds did little real damage, but such an attack startled him. He had the
impression of insubstantial creatures flying alongside him.
Pushing these thoughts from his mind, he turned into a steep dive, legs held together and arms
clasped tightly to his sides, and prayed that he would escape the hellish clouds alive.
Marduk chanted as he held his hands out towards the Daemonschage. As he bound each additional
daemon essence within its structure, another tiny line from the Book of Lorgar flashed into existence
upon its surface.
The true names of the daemonic entities contained within appeared between each line of the holy
script and the beings of the warp screamed in hatred as they were sucked from the Ether and sealed
within. The bell was vibrating slightly, creating a low hum that would have been impossible to hear
with mere human ears.
His hands shook with the power of the summoning, and a bead of sweat rolled down his
forehead from the exertion. He was vaguely aware of explosions in the skies above and of dark
shapes falling around him, but his entire concentration was focused upon the Daemonschage, and its
complex binding incantations.
The pressure in his head increased and he felt the strength of the warp building within him. Still,
his faith was unwavering and he bound the daemons of the warp to his will with the power of his
word. The corners of his mouth rose in a smile as he incanted, relishing the feeling of sheer joy that
came with control over the entities of Chaos.
Varnus crouched, unmoving atop the towering Gehemehnet wall, enthralled and horrified. The air at
the top of the tower was electric and he could see dim, shadowy shapes of daemons being pulled
screaming and clawing into the massive bell that hung over the endless drop of the tower’s chimney.
The corpses hanging in the chains twitched and convulsed, and he reeled backwards in shock as a
body fell from the sky to land upon that spider web of chain, crashing amongst the corpses with
bone breaking force.
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The body jerked as the chains broke its fall and the man’s back, and the body hung for a moment
before it continued downwards, spiralling madly, down into the depths of the planet. A moment
later, a roar of hot air was expelled up the hollow shaft, and Varnus saw more bodies falling around
him. He decided that he must truly have lost his sanity, if he was seeing men falling from the
heavens.
Still they fell, some tumbling down into the gaping maw of the Gehemehnet, as if it were
drawing them to it, and others flashing past him, smashing into the outside of the tower. He jumped
to his feet as a figure fell directly towards him, scrambling out of the way as it smashed into stone
with a sickening sound. The man lay broken and very dead, his legs and arms bent beneath him,
blood splattering out over the stones and across Varnus’s legs. He stood, looking down at the
helmeted corpse dumbly. It was Imperial!
Another figure landed beside him, though this one’s descent was slowed by a tech-device upon
its back. He landed awkwardly, one of his legs buckling beneath him with a sickening, cracking
sound.
The figure cried out in pain and fell to one knee. He held a lasgun in his hand and Varnus could
see his pale blue eyes behind his visor. He saw the twin-headed eagle symbol of the aquila pinned to
the man’s chest and he felt a surge of recognition. This was an Imperial Guardsman! The Imperium
had come to liberate Tanakreg!
He shouted out in joy and dropped to his knees to help the man, but the man scrambled back
away from him.
“I am a friend!” Varnus called out, holding his empty hands up, showing the man he was
unarmed. “I am a citizen enforcer of this planet! Thank the Emperor you have come at last!”
Guardsman Thortis cried out in pain and pulled the rebreather mask from his face. His leg was a
shattered wreck beneath him, but he pushed back with all his force away from the vile figure. His
heart was thundering in his head and his stomach churned with the absolute wrongness of
everything around him.
Insane daemon speakers blared a deafening, evil cacophony of hatred and corpses were strewn
up in chains. A devil Astartes chanted vile words that made his skin crawl and things unnatural and
maddening flickered at the corners of his vision.
The wretched follower of the ruinous powers clawed at him, his eyes as red as a daemon’s and a
burning eight-pointed star upon his forehead. His mouth was nothing but a grilled speaker-box
amidst a tight fitting, black mask, and he spoke in the foul language of Chaos.
Amid the hateful, guttural speech of the traitor, he heard the word Emperor.
“Speak not His name, enemy of mankind.” Thortis spat and levelled his lasgun at the hated foe.
The spoken words of the Guardsman meant nothing to Varnus, the sound coming out of the man’s
mouth little more than a garbled mess of childish sounds to his ears. In confusion he saw the hatred
burning on the man’s face and he saw the lasgun lower towards him.
A flash of anger burned hot within him, and he felt his blood pounding in his head. He had
offered his hand in aid to this soldier, and he was turning his weapon on him! The shock of betrayal
quickly changed to anger and his hand flashed out, knocking the barrel of the gun to one side. The
lasgun blast seared across his shoulder and he hissed in pain. Without thinking, his survival instinct
taking over, he drove the fingers of his other hand up into the man’s throat, crushing his windpipe.
He stepped in close and slammed his elbow into his head.
The Guardsman fell heavily, choking, his pale blue eyes bulging, but Varnus hauled him back to
his feet.
“I was trying to help you and this is how you repay me?” he roared, weeks of repressed rage and
shame rising to the surface. Holding onto the man’s jacket front with one hand, he thundered a
punch into the man’s face, splattering his nose.
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“I curse you!” Varnus shouted and landed another punch into the soldier’s face, ignoring the
man’s feeble attempts to deflect the blow. He pulled the helmet off the man’s head with a sharp rip
and threw it over the edge of the Gehemehnet tower. He saw that the man’s hair was sandy blond,
and for some reason even this made him angry. He saw nothing but red, felt nothing but rising
hatred, loathing and rage, and gripping the man with both hands, he smashed his forehead into his
face, and let him fall to the stone.
“I curse you,” he screamed once more, kicking the soldier hard in his side. He knelt down on top
of the man and gripped his head in both hands.
“And I curse the False Emperor!” he screamed as he slammed the soldier’s head into the stone.
Laron landed smoothly, rolling to his feet and flicking the release of the heavy grav-chute with one
hand, while he blasted his hellpistol into the face of an enemy Chaos Marine. His ornate plasma
pistol appeared in his other hand and he fired it into the chest of a second enemy warrior, the
screaming plasma searing through ceramite, flesh and bone. Super-heated air vented from the potent
weapon, hissing like an angry serpent.
Storm troopers were landing all around him, laying down a withering hail of fire from their
overcharged, gyro-stabilised hellguns. All vox communication was jammed and Laron wondered
how many of his soldiers had survived the drop even if their Valkyrie had not been gunned down on
the approach.
Thousands of drop-troopers were descending through the hellish clouds above and falling along
the ridge of the second enemy embankment, just behind the long first line. Some squads of Laron’s
storm troopers had been briefed to attack along the second tier, targeting the enemy’s static war
machines with melta weaponry, but the majority of his elite cadre were targetting the bunkers along
the first battlement.
While Laron’s squad laid down a protective curtain of fire, one of his men knelt and stuck a
melta charge to the thick door of the bunker.
“Clear,” yelled the man, stepping back, and the charge detonated inwards, melting the thick
metal to liquid.
A second storm trooper stepped forward, kicked the heavy, metal door open and filled the
interior with a spray of roaring promethium from his flamer, before pulling back, allowing Laron to
lead the hellgun-armed soldiers in.
The walls were scorched black from the flames and the advanced auto-sensor systems in Laron’s
helmet adjusted to the gloom instantly. He fired both his pistols into the massive shape of the first
Chaos Marine and his soldiers’ hellguns shot down the next, even as the enemy swung their
weapons to bear.
A blast from a lascannon, blindingly bright in the confines of the bunker, ripped a head-sized
hole through one of his men and tore the arm off another, before striking the bunker wall behind
them. A pair of enemy warriors had thrown down their missile launchers and hurled themselves at
the storm troopers, their armour blackened and still burning in places.
Laron ducked beneath the huge slashing knife of the first and fired his plasma pistol into the
giant Chaos Marine’s groin, followed by a sharp double-tap from his hellgun into the traitor’s head
as he fell back.
Four hellgun shots slammed into the second enemy warrior, but it did not slow him, and he
barrelled into the storm troopers with a daemonic roar. The traitor rammed two men back against the
thick wall of the bunker with the sickening sound of breaking bones and swung his fist into the face
of another as he rose, shattering the bones of the man’s jaw.
The lascannon-wielding enemy swung the heavy weapon like a club, sending Laron flying into a
wall. He slid to the ground gasping for breath. Raising both his pistols from his prone position, he
fired into the chest of the Chaos Marine, who twitched and fell.
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Laron pushed himself to his feet to see the last traitor fall to his knees. Even as the Chaos Marine
died, he broke the neck of a storm trooper, before a trio of hellgun shots took him in the head.
Four of Laron’s men were dead, but the bunker had been neutralised.
“Out,” he shouted. “To the next one.”
Concentrated heavy weapon fire ripped through the Imperial armoured advance and the
embankment was littered with scores of motionless and burned out vehicles. Battle cannons roared
and the heavy siege shells fired at close range, obliterated dozens of bunkers.
The south end of the embankment was overran, armoured vehicles rolling up and over the
defensive position. Hellhound tanks spewed sheets of flaming promethium, engulfing dozens of
Word Bearers before heavy weapons pierced their fuel tanks and they exploded in rising balls of
fire, sending the searing, flammable liquid spraying out in all directions.
Hulking, super-heavy Gorgon assault tanks roared up the steep embankment, their side-sponsons
spewing flaming death and autocannon turrets raking along the ridge top.
Streaking lascannon beams and smoking krak missiles zeroed in on the Mechanicus vehicles, but
