nothing was able to halt their advance. As they reached the top of the tier, their huge assault ramps
were dropped and the heavy battle servitors within surged out, chainguns spinning and multi-meltas
hissing.
“The reserve is committed, my lord. Have engaged the enemy behind the second tier,” said the
growling voice of Bokkar, Kol Badar’s Anointed sergeant, across a closed vox-channel.
“Understood,” replied Kol Badar. The reserve had occupied the third tier, guarding against the
enemy dropping in behind the main battle force of the Host.
The Kataphractoi followed in the wake of the Gorgons, Skitarii warriors hard-wired into tracked
units. They roared forward, heavy bolters barking and missile pods sending streams of selfpropelled
explosives towards the Word Bearers.
Echelons of Thunderbolts screamed through the air, flying low, tearing up the ground with their
strafing gunfire. Several of the fighters were blown out of the sky, lascannon fire and anti-aircraft
cannons tearing through wings and cockpits, and they smashed down into the ground, carving
burning furrows through the earth and killing all in their path.
Still more drop-troopers fell from the sky, though for every soldier who landed ready to fight,
another four smashed lifeless into the earth. Marauder bombers and Valkyries descended in flames
through the wildly circling black clouds overhead to crash amid the chaotic battle.
Kol Badar grinned at the spectacle of carnage around him as he gunned down dozens of enemy
Guardsmen as they landed. There would be no break in the fighting until victory was achieved and
all his enemies were dead or dying upon this field of battle.
Flames washed over him, but he stepped through the conflagration and smashed the weapon out
of a Guardsman’s hands, placing the barrel of his combi-bolter against the chest of the soldier,
relishing the look of terror on the man’s face. He pulled the trigger and the man was smashed to the
ground, his chest blown open.
“Captains of the Legion, pull your warriors back to the second tier.”
The evacuation of the first line of defence was methodical and organised. The Coryphaus had
dictated his orders to his underlings and each enacted his designs with practised efficiency.
Under the covering fire of the restrained Dreadnoughts and war machines of the Host, the
warrior-brothers pulled back. They walked with unhurried, measured steps as they laid down
overlapping enfilades of fire against the combat servitors emerging from their transports, specialist
weaponry destroying vehicles and tanks.
Kol Badar and his Anointed stood at the base of the second tier, clearing the area of incoming
drop-troopers, their roaring weapons ripping easily through the lightly armoured foe. They were
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practically immune to the Guardsmen’s fire and carved through them with ease, though the number
of the foe was starting to clog the open space with bodies.
He saw the Warmonger stepping resolutely backwards, his roaring cannons ripping apart the foe,
and the heavy flamer slung beneath his power claw engulfing dozens in flames.
Laron dropped off the stepped rampart of the embankment, snapping off shots with his pistols at the
retreating enemy, before taking cover behind the wrecked chassis of a Gorgon. They were masterful
in their order and precision. Each squad that backed off was supported by angled lines of troops
firing their bolters in controlled bursts. It was like attacking a damned fortification. The lines of the
enemy were angled like those of the greatest fortresses, with the strongest points, the “towers”,
being squads bearing heavy weapons. The Guardsmen were naturally drawn towards the apparently
weaker points, veering away from the heavy weapons, but this brought them into the deadly killing
ground where the enemy’s guns were able to assail them from both sides.
“Where is that damned infantry?” he snarled. He desperately needed the massed ranks of the
Skitarii foot cohorts to arrive, for he had not the men to tackle the retreating foe, and the incoming
Elysians were being cut down in swathes.
As if on cue, the first ranks of the tech-guard cohort appeared over the edge of the battlements,
tracked weaponry rolling forward at their side. They began to fire as they marched resolutely
forwards.
The tracked units of the tech-guard unleashed the power of their arcane construction at the
Chaos Marines as they backed away. The air crackled with energy as coruscating lightning leapt
from humming bronze spheres to strike the foe. The ground was ripped up as bizarre weapons fired,
causing great rents to rip along the ground, tossing the enemy into the air. Heavy, quad-barrelled
cannons pumped fire into the foe, but the traitors, recognising the new threat, began to target the
tracked units of the Mechanicus with missiles and other heavy weapons fire.
Laron’s eyes flashed to the timer counting down in the corner of the head-up display in his
helmet and he swore. The second wave of drop-troopers was about to be launched and the antiaircraft
fire from the palace had not yet been silenced. The first wave had been devastated and it
looked as though the second would face a similar barrage.
Time was running out.
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CHAPTER NINETEEN
Brigadier-General Havorn cursed as the pict-screen before him flickered, the detailed mapschematic
shorting out. The Chimera bumped its occupants about as it rolled across the salt plain in
the wake of the tech-guard cohorts. Sweat was dripping down Havorn’s face.
Bestial roars and screaming mixed with hissing static blared out of the vox-unit suddenly,
replacing the relayed chatter of the senior captains.
“What the hell’s all that?” Havorn snarled.
“I don’t know, sir, but its been flooding the less powerful voxes for the past hundred metres or
so,” replied his adjutant. “I thought my set-up would be too powerful for it. Damn enemy’s jamming
our comms somehow.”
“Perfect. Looks like the rest of this war is going to be fought deaf, dumb and blind.”
“Your officers are good men, sir,” replied the man. “They know their orders.”
“Move us up closer to the front, Kashar. I want to at least be able to see what the hell is going
on.”
“Is that wise, brigadier-general? You would be exposing yourself to unnecessary danger.”
“What do you think is going to happen if we lose this battle, Kashar? We lose this battle and we
are all dead men. Move us up closer. I want to be able to see the outcome with my own eyes.”
Burias-Drak’shal hacked left and right, smashing the Skitarii out of his way with sweeps of his
spiked icon. At the Coryphaus’s order he had remounted his Land Raider and led his warriors
straight into the massed ranks of the enemy cohorts, meeting them within another of the slowly
dispersing cloud walls. The vehicles had ploughed through the enemy ranks, crushing hundreds
beneath their heavy tracks.
The Rhinos disabled by the foe were left behind, the warrior-brothers within abandoned to their
fate. They would kill many before they fell. It was an honour to die for the Legion.
They had ridden deep into the heart of the enemy formation, until his Land Raider was finally
brought to a halt, its hull pierced by countless melta-blasts, its tracks torn and ragged, and its engine
reduced to molten metal.
Even then, Burias-Drak’shal refused to be slowed, leading his coterie of warrior-brothers out of
the ruined vehicle, roaring and screaming their battle-cries. He pulverised the enemy in his path,
shrugging off countless wounds and gunshots that would have killed any other warrior-brother
within the Host. The Word Bearers carved a bloody swathe through the Skitarii cohorts, urged ever
onwards by the Icon Bearer, following the frenzied warrior deeper into the enemy formation. These
were the regular troopers of the Adeptus Mechanicus, indentured warriors who had only minor
augmetic enhancements: eye-piece targeters, altered neural pathways, enhanced lungs and such, and
they died easily beneath the fury of the possessed warrior and his battle-brothers.
Hissing ichor dripped from his wounds and his armour was cracked and blistering, yet Burias-
Drak’shal continued on, ploughing through the enemy, bashing them out of his path. His warriors’
chainaxes rose and fell, and bolt pistols blasted as they followed behind him.
Burias-Drak’shal blocked a swinging double-handed axe with the shaft of his icon and grabbed a
hovering metallic tentacle attached to the red-robed Tech-Priest’s spine, pulling the adept towards
him. He leant forwards, snarling as the priest stumbled, and ripped out his throat with a bite, tasting
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putrid oils and blood-replacement fluids in his mouth. Knocking the priest to the ground he
continued to ran, impaling a gun-servitor upon the point of the icon and hurling it into the air as its
heavy bolter armament ripped chunks out of his shoulder pad.
He saw armoured personnel carriers through the press of bodies up ahead and roared as he
sensed that the prey was close, sprinting on with renewed vigour. With a flick of his talons he
decapitated another foe, and smashed another out of his way with the return blow, a brutal backhand
swing that almost ripped the head of another Skitarii from its shoulders.
The fighting between the first and second tier was brutal and bloody. The daemon engines of the
Word Bearers unleashed countless barrages of warp infused shells into the no man’s land, killing
thousands. The Skitarii warriors marched in perfect unison into the guns of the Word Bearers
protected behind the fortified bulwark of the second embankment and hundreds of them were torn
apart by the concentrated fire.
“Ancients of battle,” roared the Warmonger, “be released from your shackles and kill once more
in the name of Lorgar!”
Thirty Dreadnoughts roared and screamed wordlessly, straining against the inscribed chains that
bound them. The chains were suddenly released and the bloodthirsty machines, all semblance of
their sanity having long abandoned them, were unleashed on the enemy as they pushed up the
second tier.
They surged over the parapet, their ancient weapons roaring and booming, and they slammed
into the enemy, hurling them into the air with great sweeps of their power claws and piston-driven
siege hammers. Multi-bladed power gauntlets scythed through the front ranks of the foe, cleaving
men and Skitarii in half, and screaming chainfists the length of two men carved down through the
bodies of others, throwing blood and chunks of flesh in every direction.
Dreadnoughts stood atop the bulwark, missiles firing from their inbuilt weapon systems,
detonating amongst the foe in fiery blasts. One Dreadnought, screaming insanely, turned its rapid
firing autocannons upon power armoured warrior-brothers, his ability to distinguish between friend
and foe lost in the madness of battle.
The Warmonger strode towards the machine and struck it to the ground with one mighty sweep
of its arm. It kicked and screamed madly as it tried to right itself, and the Warmonger unleashed the
power of its guns into the sarcophagus casing of the Dreadnought, seeking to put an end to its
struggles. Its kicking ceased and its screams became a gurgled hiss. A cadaverous, jawless head
could be seen within the cracked sarcophagus, the skull malformed and covered with bony, spiny
growths coated in sickly pus.
“You are released from your bondage, warrior-brother,” intoned the Warmonger before it turned
its guns once more towards the numberless enemy swarming over the barricade.
“Coryphaus, the smoke-wall is abating. The Ordinatus is come,” said Bokkar.
“What?” growled Kol Badar. “The Mechanicus would never risk the war machine until its safety
was assured.”
“Nevertheless, it is advancing across the salt plain, my lord. It will be in range of the daemon
engines within the minute and will be ready to fire upon the palace within ten.”
“A curse upon them! Pull out from combat, Bokkar. Take a Thunderhawk and slow the damned
thing down! Get the daemon engines to target it.”
“As you wish, Coryphaus.”
My lord Jarulek, it is done. The Daemonschage is ready.
Good, my acolyte, Jarulek replied. Everything is set in motion. I will join you shortly.
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Jarulek opened his eyes from the deep trance. He sat in the restoration chamber, blinking against
the thick, viscous liquid that he was immersed in. His arms were bare, the script-covered, pale and
heavily muscled limbs pierced by dozens of pipes and needles, pumping him with biologics and
serums. He had no wish for his underlings to realise just how taxing the creation of the Gehemehnet
had been on his system, but the last twelve hours in the tank, deep in a trance and communion with
the higher powers, had rejuvenated him.
The thick liquid evacuated from the chamber, sucked into gurgling pipes, and he sank to his feet.
Chirameks clustered around him, pulling free the tubes and pipes inserted into his veins and
muscles, and he flexed his fingers. The time to rejoin the Host had come. It was mere hours until the
alignment of planets took place, until the Gehemehnet awoke.
Techno-Magos Darioq stood impassively upon the secondary gantry deck of the Ordinatus as heavycalibre
anti-aircraft batteries directed fire towards the Thunderhawk. The enemy’s barrages had been
as nothing to the Ordinatus, the incoming ordnance soaked up by flashing void shields, and its return
fire darkened the air, overloading the gunship’s shielding with ease.
The critically damaged Thunderhawk turned towards the Ordinatus, its pilot clearly fighting
with its controls to guide it towards the target. It passed through the giant vehicle’s void shields as
its left wing tore loose, sending the gunship spinning, and the concentrated, servitor aimed quadcannons
ripped the hull apart, tearing the bulky aircraft in two. The rear half was engulfed in flames
and exploded as the fire reached its fuel lines. The front half of the gunship fell from the sky,
plummeting towards the Ordinatus, propelled by its velocity and the force of the explosion.
Techno-Magos Darioq calculated the trajectory and velocity of the incoming debris from his
position and stood stone still as it slammed into the upper deck above. The metal grid was smashed
asunder by the massive incoming weight and it skimmed along the metal, raising a shower of sparks
as it ploughed through barricades and crane-structures. It screeched through one of the cannon
