Graitus gave the call to arms as the enemy began their assault on the citadel. ‘Storm’s coming!’
The line of crimson demigods at his side rose as one, squaring their shoulders before the charge of the traitors. The crash of bolters filled the air. Blood and smoke filled every nostril, and gummed every tongue. Voices grew hoarse from battle cries, oaths and shouts of defiant rage. And of pain.
The Iron Warriors fell back from the defenders, leaving bodies of iron, gold and jet upon the ground. Fists of red and gold punched the air from the hasty ramparts, the barrels of their weapons still smoking as they gave voice to the cry.
‘For the primarch!’
For a second time the traitors charged, and for a second time they were repelled. Those loyal to the Golden Throne held against the attack, pushing back the ones sworn to destroy it.
‘For the primarch!’
It was not until the third charge that loyalists began to die. The bodies of Iron Warriors sprawled against the chest-high wall the Genesis Chapter defended. Bolters clicked dry in the middle of the fighting, thrown aside for knives and fists. Every push the traitors made took them closer. And now the Iron Warriors were not the only side standing over dead brothers.
‘For the primarch.’
‘Storm’s coming.’
This time, the call to arms wheezed out of Graitus. The joints along his left side screamed, vomiting a cascade of sparks as he moved. The rough line of triangular gouged slits where a chainaxe had shredded through the ceramite and butchered the fibre bundles was clear to see.
The Iron Warriors gathered. Their last enemy attack had been repelled by bolters. This time, there would only be blades.
Jovian inched next to Graitus, thudding his back against the wall and gritting his teeth against the pain. The number of his wounds had grown to the point where the physical trauma had merged across his entire body as a single throbbing, furnace-hot pain. He nodded towards Graitus, an unspoken question posed if there was anything that his skills could do to help. Graitus shook his head.
‘I hate this world,’ grumbled the veteran. He turned his white helm, its surface splashed with blood along with the rest of him. Looking back over the wall he scanned across the horizon. ‘It is a singularly ugly rock. Holes everywhere, like bite marks. But I have to die somewhere, and the Olympians are a proper foe to drown with my blood. Could you imagine forfeiting your life to the devourer, or the t’au?’
Despite himself, Jovian’s shoulders began to shake. His laughter came out ragged and laced with static from the vox-grille of his abused helm. Tired, hollow mirth echoed down the line from each of the Genesis Chapter warriors.
‘You’ll never die beneath the Newfound sky,’ said the Apothecary, repeating the promise given to any who ascended and took the path of crimson and gold.
Graitus looked up into the toxic swirl that hung over Quradim. ‘This will be the one for us.’
Flavius leaned over in a grind of ruined armour and tiredly cuffed Jovian on the shoulder. ‘Why not?’
Jovian looked down at the weapon in his hands. His chainsword had been lost in one of the previous charges, ripped from his hand by a heretic who Jovian had then killed with his carnifex. He now cradled a chipped power axe, and it struck him at that moment that he did not know how he had gained possession of it, or who had owned it before. It hardly seemed to matter now.
‘Why not?’ he agreed.
‘Alright, my brothers.’ Graitus heaved himself upright, leaning upon the wall and flexing his grip around the broken gladius he carried. ‘Storm’s coming!’
Theron stood upon a rooftop, flanked by his Inceptors. He looked down upon the square, and the broken strip of stone leading from it to the Genesis Chapter’s defence line. It was torn to utter ruin, pockmarked with craters from grenades and littered with the bodies of traitors. The loyalist defenders looked little better, bled white by the relentless attacks of an enemy born to be attrition fighters.
Assault Marines were of little use behind a wall, and so Theron had kept to the sky and flanks of each charge, harrying the assault forces as they advanced and then picking off stragglers as they were repelled and fell back. Iason had depleted his ammunition supply, and now resorted to clubbing the Iron Warriors with his assault bolters face to face. Melos was nursing the dwindling charge he had left, firing shots that carried half or a quarter of the power of a normal plasma blast. Theron’s bolt pistol was mag-locked to his thigh, starved of rounds, and his chainsword was chipped and gouged from sawing through the ancient plate of the traitors.
‘They are mustering again,’ said Melos, studying the scene below from the blank slit of his helm. ‘By the primarch, they are relentless.’
‘We should go down and support them,’ offered Iason. ‘Their ammunition is gone, it will be a melee. That suits us.’
‘At a certain point, bodies are greater than the tactical flexibility we provide not being behind their barricade.’ Theron looked along the bloody path up to the facility. ‘I believe that point has come.’
The Inceptors stepped forward to stand on the ledge with him at those words. Theron could feel the eagerness emanating from their postures. ‘We will hit them as they advance, one last time as we have before. Be mindful of their spacing, and do not let them draw you in. Hit them hard, quickly, and then get clear. From there we will bolster our cousins at the wall. Iason, I want you at the left flank, it needs reinforcement. Melos, you will go and hold the centre. Fire until your weapons deplete, and then join me filling in the gaps as they appear. Questions?’
‘None,’ Melos and Iason answered together.
‘Then let us be about it,’ said Theron, and stepped off the ledge.
They fell, a wedge of blue slashing down past a crumbling tower of black and grey. The enemy had begun their attack, laying down a curtain of electric smoke from blind grenades to cover their advance. They knew that the Genesis Chapter had exhausted their ammunition, and so they were clear to move up the incline unmolested.
Not entirely. Theron looked to Melos, who took careful aim with one plasma exterminator outstretched in front of him. He fired, loosing the shot at the lead Iron Warrior making the charge. The traitor turned at the last second, recoiling as the blast struck his upraised arm. With a flash of crackling blue light, the arm and half the Chaos Space Marine’s ribcage were gone, the wound fused and cauterised into a dark red knot threaded in scorched metal. Dark blood oozed out of the lesion, a dozen scarlet points that bled down into haemorrhage. The Olympian took a single step before falling dead in the dust.
Iason roared as he came down, throwing all of the weight of his fall into an overhead strike that crushed the skull of an Iron Warrior. The blow unbalanced the Inceptor, and he stumbled for a moment as he fought to regain his footing.
‘Keep moving!’ shouted Theron. He threw up his guard and caught a chopping blow from an axe between the teeth of his chainsword. The Ultramarine heaved forward, throwing the Iron Warrior back to crash down the incline. He turned his back on the opponent. There was no time to follow up and finish him. ‘Keep moving!’
The Assault Marines bounced across the incline in short bursts from their thruster packs. They overlapped each other’s flight paths, keeping the enemy from determining a pattern to their movement and bracketing them with bolter fire. As they approached the top of the road, Theron opened a vox-channel to Flavius and Jovian.
‘Hold your blades, cousins,’ said the Ultramarine, leaping aside to avoid a crushing swing of a thunder hammer. ‘We are coming across to reinforce you.’
The low wall of the barricade materialised out of the smoke. Theron reached out, taking hold of the edge and vaulting over. Gauntleted hands took hold of his shoulder guards, lifting him back up from the ground.
Melos and Iason came over next, the plasma gunner at the centre and the other Inceptor at the end of the left flank. Something else landed beside Theron with a crunching thud. He saw the glint of gunmetal at the edge of his visor.
The Iron Warrior dragged Theron to the ground, scrambling over the top of him and fighting to force the tip of a dagger into a gap between the plates of his armour. The close confines made his chainsword unwieldy, and he released it to seize the wrist of the traitor’s knife hand.
The blade of a gladius punched through the Iron Warrior’s shoulder joint. The dagger clattered to the ground as the hand holding it went limp. The tip of the gladius was pulled free, emerging again an instant later through the enemy’s abdomen.
‘You didn’t say you were bringing friends,’ snapped Graitus as he left his sword sheathed in the traitor’s guts. He took hold of the Iron Warrior’s head on either side and twisted it violently to the left. The body fell in front of Theron, head lolling awkwardly from a broken neck.
‘Incoming!’
Theron looked down the line, seeing the grenade as it fell between two Space Marines. The one who had shouted the warning scooped up the sphere of dark metal, hurling it back over the wall.
More bombs came. A warrior stooped over, gathering one up to pitch it back. He made ready to throw when it detonated, taking his arm at the shoulder and savaging the armour of the three brothers around him.
Theron stood up from behind the wall. He saw the smoke darken with an unbroken line of advancing Iron Warriors. Genesis Chapter Space Marines stood beside him, hefting their weapons and readying themselves for the close order slaughter to come.
And then, the smoke cleared. Rather, it fled, hurled aside by the breath of great fiery engines. Their roar filled Theron’s ears, one he knew all too well.
‘The Pilum!’ called out Melos.
The Stormraven dropped to a hover over the citadel, its heavy bolters firing into the squads of Iron Warriors. Ultramarines dropped in front of the barricade, massive fighters that matched the Inceptors in scale. Leading them forwards was the black armoured form of a Chaplain, his skull-faced helm flaked with drying gore.
‘By the grace of the God-Emperor,’ said Helios. ‘My fellow sons of Guilliman, you weren’t going to slaughter all of these heretics yourselves, were you?’