Flesh of Cretacia Read online

  ‘I am aware of that, but we are under attack. We cannot assume the others haven’t been destroyed or driven off course.’ Amit shrugged off Barakiel’s hand. ‘Zadkiel, increase speed and angle of descent–’

  ‘Lord, if we hit a mountain–’

  ‘We land now or we die!’ Amit declared as the Thunderhawk bucked around them.

  Barakiel swallowed back his reply. He would trust in the will of the Blood. ‘Anjelo,’ he voxed the gunner. ‘After the next impact, open fire. Heavy bolters only.’ If the rest of the gunships were within lethal range then, Emperor willing, the explosive rounds wouldn’t cause too much damage. ‘Keep shooting until we’re on the ground.’

  A pair of acknowledgment icons flashed on Barakiel’s helmet display. ‘The Blood protects.’

  Target

  Target lost

  Target

  Target lo–

  Manakel cut the vox feed, silencing the gun servitor’s erratic updates. ‘Raziel, break formation. Descend, full burn.’

  Lahhel spoke up. ‘Baal’s Fury will be exposed if we break formation. We should maintain standard descent speed and heading.’

  Manakel gritted his teeth as another jarring impact forced him into his harness. ‘We cannot protect ourselves, let alone the Mortis. Raziel, get us on the ground.’ The mechanical raspings of Manakel’s voice sounded even more tortured as he growled out the syllables between the gunship’s convulsions. ‘Now.’

  ‘Acknowledged, burning–’

  Raziel’s reply was drowned out by a hail of sharp explosions striking the Spear’s hull.

  ‘Raziel!’

  ‘We’re under fire!’

  The Storm Eagle shuddered violently as another fusillade slammed into its flank. This time the rounds perforated the hull, stitching a line of fist-sized holes in the wall. Manakel did his best to protect his head as a slew of shrapnel ricocheted around inside the transport hold. ‘Evasive action, sharp descent.’

  ‘We’re dead if we collide with another gunship,’ said Lahhel. His objection came a moment before another torrent of rounds struck the hull.

  ‘We’re dead if we carry on like this,’ Manakel snarled, his gaze finding the shredded corpses of Nanael and Barchiel. The two Flesh Tearers slumped in their harnesses, gaping shrapnel wounds in their chests.

  The Storm Eagle’s hull squealed as the gunship lurched and pitched. ‘Raziel?’ Manakel tried in vain to summon the pilot on the vox. Cursing, he called up the squad ident icons to his helmet display. Nanael and Barchiel’s were faded out, Raziel’s too – the pilot was dead. ‘Rest well, brother.’ Manakel mouthed a short prayer then opened the squad-wide comm channel. ‘On your feet. Lucifus, open the ramp.’ The Flesh Tearer nearest the exit hatch disengaged his harness.

  ‘That last burst must have damaged the servos.’ Lucifus’s voice was strained and it was only then that Manakel noticed the ceramite around his ribs was slick with blood. ‘It’s jammed.’

  ‘Stand aside,’ Manakel growled, flicking the activation stud on Seraph’s chainsword. A hail of amber sparks showered his armour as he punched it into the door seal and dragged its adamantium teeth through the locking clamps. With a grunt of effort he brought his knee up to his chest and kicked out, snapping the door from its mounting, allowing it to be sucked away by the gale outside.

  ‘We cannot jump into that.’ Lahhel was standing by Manakel’s shoulder, but had to shout to be heard over the tumultuous winds and the screech of the Storm Eagle’s engines.

  Manakel turned to face his squad, the Chapter symbols emblazoned on their shoulder guards strengthened his will. ‘Where a man may find himself frozen, gripped by hopelessness, a Space Marine shall act. We are the sons of Sanguinius and we fight for every breath!’

  ‘Until death!’ Seventh Squad said as one, the sound of their gauntleted salutes a harsh rebuttal to the chaos enveloping their Storm Eagle.

  One by one, they leapt from the tumbling ship, vanishing into a sea of cloud.

  ‘The Blood protects.’ Manakel rapped his fist against his helmet and followed them into hell.

  The winds caught Manakel as soon as he’d cleared the craft, whipping him down and across the belly of the Storm Eagle. Warning sigils flared on his retinal display as he slammed into the hull and drifted through the gunship’s engine backwash. Errant flame licked at his armour, burning away the parchments of litany and scorching the crimson plating black. He tumbled, blind, grimacing as he collided with the wing. The jolt threw him clear. He activated his jump pack. Nothing.

  ‘Mars be damned,’ Manakel cursed as the altimeter on his helmet display raced towards zero.

  He boosted the jump pack again. The twin thrusters coughed, flaring once in defiance of the winds before stuttering and dying. Manakel continued to fall. A terminus rune filled his display as his armour’s cogitators predicted his death. Even encased in ceramite and the shock-absorbing membrane of his power armour, he was unlikely to survive the fall. Anger surged through Manakel, dragging a bestial roar from his lips. This was no way for a warrior to die. ‘Blood, grant me my vengeance.’ Manakel closed his eyes.

  The clouds vanished, dissipating without warning. Stabbing beams of light from the wings of the Flesh Tearers gunships split apart the night sky to reveal an undulating landscape of soaring trees and black-tipped mountains.

  ‘Target. Emperor’s glory. Target acquired,’ Anjelo bellowed over the vox as he sighted the enemy.

  Weapons fire rang out like thunder as the Vengeance’s guns opened up with renewed vigour, the chatter of heavy bolters joined by the snap of lascannons as the Thunderhawk’s weapons locked on.

  The vox channels, which had hummed with stale static, came alive as the gunship pilots co-ordinated their attack. Reports of multiple air targets flooded over Amit’s helmet display. He pushed them aside, calling up the view from the Vengeance’s external pict-viewers. His display flickered for a moment before a tactical inset resolved over his right eye, giving him his first glimpse of their attackers.

  Four-winged beasts, almost as large as Storm Eagles, circled the Flesh Tearers gunships. Scaled skin covered their bodies and necks like a suit of segmented armour. The broad brow of their avian faces narrowed to hooked beaks and they had long, whip-like tails that ended in orbs of gnarled bone. The nearest of the beasts was using such an organic mace to bludgeon the armourglass of the Vengeance’s flight deck. A bead of white-hot energy spat out from Baal’s Fury, scoring a wide gash across the creature’s chest. It fumbled in the air before being shredded by a salvo from the Mortis Wrath’s heavy bolters.

  Amit blink-clicked to the next pict-viewer and the next, cycling through the multitude of feeds to establish a broader picture of the combat. A dozen beasts remained. Though many were wounded, their carapaces cracked by heavy bolter rounds, they continued to throw themselves against the Flesh Tearers craft, snapping their beaks against stabiliser fins and wings. Amit admired their tenacity, but their resistance was in vain. With their targeting auguries functioning, it took the Flesh Tearers fewer than two minutes to cut the beasts down. Ochre carcasses toppled from the sky like wilting leaves or exploded in hails of gore as the Flesh Tearers gunners found their mark. Dogged by missiles launched from Baal’s Fury, the remaining pair of beasts gained altitude, retreating up into the clouds.

  ‘Get us on the ground,’ Amit snarled as the last of the threat icons disappeared from his display. His blood was up, pulse hammering. To have been so close to the enemy but unable to kill them with his own hands was a cruel torment. ‘Now!’

  ‘There’s nowhere to land, master.’ Zadkiel regretted his reply even as the words left his mouth.

  ‘Then have Anjelo make somewhere.’ Amit’s voice was a threatening growl, the rumble of distant thunder before the storm.

  ‘Yes, Chapter Master.’ Zadkiel was loath to waste the ammunition but better that than challen
ging Amit, given his lord’s current mood.

  The Vengeance turned her weapons on the ground below, joined an instant later by the Serrated Angel and Baal’s Fury. The three Thunderhawks cut out a clearing, their battle cannons blasting apart protruding rocks, while sustained salvos from their heavy bolters churned trees into a fine mist of splintered wood and pulped foliage. The gunships’ thrusters finished the job, burning away what little remained as the craft descended.

  The Vengeance’s assault ramp was halfway down as its landing struts met the ground. Amit was out of the gunship a few seconds later, dropping from the lip of the ramp into the wet mulch of the earth. His honour guard followed him, their storm bolters panning for targets. The whirring clack of Drual and Tilonas’s assault cannons competed with the landing jets of the Mortis Wrath and Blood Drinker as the six barrels of their weapons cycled to firing speed. Rainwater fell from the sky in unending sheets.

  Barakiel took point, his feet pressed ankle-deep into the mud by the immense weight of his armour as he strode towards the treeline. Tactical data cascaded over his helmet display as his armour’s autosenses analysed everything he looked at. ‘Threats negative. Area secure.’

  ‘What of the others?’ asked Amit.

  ‘All craft are on the ground and accounted for, save the Spear of Sanguinius.’ Barakiel kept his gaze on the forest as he spoke, performing a final scan before rejoining the honour guard in the lee of the Thunderhawk.

  ‘Destroyed?’

  ‘The Mortis Wrath caught a glimpse of her tumbling.’

  ‘Survivors?’

  ‘Unknown, lord.’

  Amit snarled, and gestured towards the encircling forest, wondering what dangers awaited them there. ‘Have Bieil move his squad up and burn back those trees ten metres.’

  While a Flesh Tearer was easily a match for a single ork, he had no idea of the size or position of the enemy force. If the greenskins attacked in enough numbers, the Flesh Tearers risked being overrun. It was imperative they establish some clear ground, a killing field that would allow them to thin out the ork numbers before meeting them with fist and blade. ‘I want a defensive perimeter in ten minutes.’

  A rune of affirmation blinked on Amit’s helmet display as Barakiel went to carry out his orders.

  ‘Asmodel.’

  ‘Yes, lord.’ the Scout sergeant’s voice came in distorted snatches over the vox.

  Amit paused as he stared through the pitch black of the night into the forest. A labyrinth of trees and long grass glared back, their imposing silhouettes lit up by sporadic flashes of lightning that cut the sky in angry swathes. ‘Find me some orks.’

  ‘Many died on that first day. But far fewer than would fall later, and fewer still than those who have died since.

  ‘We descended from the heavens, angels of fire and death, bent on vengeance. But the fourth planet was a death world, a wildwood of wrathful fauna and barbed flora, an unforgiving landscape that sought to punish those who trespassed against it. We named it Cretacia, from the ancient Baal sandscript, meaning Birth of Wrath.

  ‘Like us, Cretacia was a consummate killer. Violence lived in its very air. Its winds were the lash of a terrible beast, striking out to flay us from the skies; its clouds, void-dark phantoms whose acid tears stripped the crimson from our warplate. Death met us at every turn, tested our resolve and measured our strength. We were as the angels from old Terran legend, trapped in hell itself.

  ‘Yet for all our trials, Cretacia’s wrath was far from spent.’

  TWO

  SURVIVAL

  Asmodel held up a fist, slowing the march.

  Sweat rolled from Cassiel’s brow and dripped from his chin in a continuous patter; the pace had been punishing. He crouched low and sucked in a breath. The forest air was moist, thick with unfamiliar scents.

  ‘What’s wrong, brother? Mission pace too much for you?’ Melechk’s voice crackled low in Cassiel’s vox-bead.

  ‘Whelp should have stayed in the training cages.’ Izail’s tone had none of Melechk’s warmth.

  Cassiel bit down a reply. His blood was already up, and he had no desire to lose his composure under the lash of Izail’s tongue. He would wait until the mission’s end before answering the wretch’s challenge. He turned his head to his left and ground his teeth. Though they were barely ten paces from him, Cassiel could not see his brothers. Formed up in standard tactical dispersal, following the strictures of the new Codex Astartes, they were separated from each other by rows of thin-trunked trees and a swathe of creeper vines and shrubs. Though it isolated them, the formation made it hard for an enemy to stumble across the entire squad and allowed the others to perform a swift counter-attack. Each of the Scouts was essentially the bait and the relief. Not that it mattered, Cassiel didn’t need his eyes to know where the others were. Training and instinct were far harder to confound than sight. Melechk was to his immediate left, Izail out past him on the far-left flank, while Hamied was to his right and Asmodel just ahead of him.

  ‘Enough chatter,’ Asmodel said over the comm. ‘All of you, bury your scent.’

  Cassiel dropped to one knee and dug his fingers into the ground. Scooping up a handful of earth and loose foliage, he rubbed it into his face and hair. Snatching up another handful, he smeared it over his armour and weapons. Though no Scout would openly admit to performing such sacrilege on their trappings or defiling their Blood-blessed skin with the soil of a heathen world, none would contest its necessity. The consecration balms and purifying oils administered by the Chapter serfs were needed to keep their equipment in working order, but it marked them out from the environment. A Scout had to smell like his surroundings. Cassiel had to become as innocuous as the crawlers that scuttled over the forest floor and scurried up into the trees. To be otherwise was to invite death.

  ‘Blood of the–’ Izail’s curse drifted over the vox a second before his bolt pistol sounded in anger.

  Cassiel was on his feet and moving before the second shot rang out, snaking towards the other Scout’s position. Hearing Izail scream he picked up his pace, ignoring the long branches that whipped against his face as he tore through the forest. He reached the Scout a heartbeat after Asmodel.

  A giant, three-headed plant towered over the sergeant, standing more than twice his height. Its rust-brown maws, the same colour as the wilted bark that covered the ground beneath their feet, were clamped around Izail’s torso. Serrated rows of dagger-teeth speared his flesh and punctured his organs, letting the plant drink deep of the Scout’s blood.

  ‘Emperor’s mercy, be silent,’ Asmodel snarled and ended Izail’s anguish with a single round from his bolt pistol. The explosive shell blew apart the Scout’s skull.

  Slow, painful exsanguination had been the only alternative to Asmodel’s quick mercy. Shouting, Cassiel opened fire, blasting apart the plant’s stem and sending its heads tumbling to the ground.

  ‘Get back!’ warned Melechk.

  Cassiel leapt away.

  An instant later, Melechk’s heavy bolter thundered to life, drowning out the background noise of the forest as a dozen more plants sprung up around the first. Knotted sinew rippled along the Scout’s arms as his muscled frame absorbed the gun’s recoil. Melechk concentrated on the nearest of the plants, bursting its heads in a flash of well-placed rounds.

  ‘Cut them back to ten paces.’ Asmodel’s order was barely audible over the rhythmic clatter of Melechk’s weapon.

  Cassiel growled an acknowledgment, bringing his knife up to slash through a barbed vine that whipped towards his throat. He advanced beside Hamied, grinning as his bolt pistol bucked in his hand, its mass-reactive payload pulping the stem of the offending plant. Switching to full-auto, he panned his weapon in a tight arc, covering Hamied as the veteran Scout primed a frag grenade.

  ‘Down!’ Hamied roared, tossing the grenade among the cluster of plants.

 
; Still firing, Cassiel dropped to one knee. The explosive detonated, incinerating a pair of plants in a cloud of flame and sending a hail of serrated metal and wire fragments tearing through the others. Cassiel grimaced as a mist of spores washed over him, stinging the exposed skin of his face. Tears rolled down his cheeks where they burned his eyes. Even in death the cursed plants were trying to kill him.

  Asmodel held up a clenched fist. ‘Cease fire! Conserve your ammunition.’

  Cassiel barely registered the sergeant’s voice over the drumming of his heart. The rest of the plants were too far back to pose further threat, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t care. He would show them no mercy, no respite. Sheathing his knife, Cassiel scooped up Izail’s bolt pistol and rose to his feet, firing on full-auto as he pressed into the morass of hostile vegetation.

  ‘Enough!’ Asmodel snarled, grabbing Cassiel’s forearm and guiding the nose of his weapon towards the ground. ‘You cannot take vengeance on an entire world with a pair of bolt pistols.’

  Cassiel grunted in frustration, his free arm still levelled at the forest. ‘But Izail, our brother... We must–’

  ‘We must do nothing!’ Asmodel spat, spraying Cassiel’s face with saliva. ‘You call Izail brother because you share the Blood. But you know nothing of the bonds of brotherhood, nothing of the pain that bind us in a shell harder than ceramite.’ Asmodel banged his fist against his breastplate and pushed Cassiel backwards with a sharp palm strike to his chest. ‘When you have bled for the Chapter only to watch those you have suffered for devolve into madness, then you may talk to me about vengeance.’

  Cassiel lowered his weapon, his body trembling with anger. ‘I–’

  ‘Say nothing,’ Asmodel ordered, his eyes fixed on Cassiel. ‘I want neither your apology nor your excuse. Melechk, retrieve Izail’s body. Hamied, secure our rear. Make sure that we haven’t attracted further attention.’ Asmodel turned away from Cassiel to address the squad. ‘Move.’