Bleeding Chalice Part 11

The Jouryans in front of them would be in the first wave to hit the walls. Sens.h.i.+ni had heard that such a thing was a great honour to many soldiers, but then he had also heard that there were a lot of crazy men in the Guard.

The thin, dark line of Jouryans crept closer to the city outskirts as the fire from the walls increased and the next waves of artillery hit home. Somewhere on the other side of the city the Stratix XXIII would be doing the same, gang-sc.u.m conscripts hurrying to get to grips with the defenders in the close-quarters butchery at which they excelled. And inside the city, defenders would be manning the walls even as they died, then rising from the dead again, if there was enough left of them.

Two hundred metres. Sens.h.i.+ni could see barely human silhouettes, some limbless or even head-less, many toting weaponry looted from the Enforcement Division armouries, others just shambling along the broken stone. Whole marble-tiled roofs had been tipped on edge to form walls, stacks of toppled pillar sections made huge obsta-cles. Whatever had been knocked down in the previous sh.e.l.ling had been carted to the edge of the city and piled into treacherous slopes of pul-verised marble and brick, with fire points on the top to rake troops with gunfire as they struggled upwards.

One hundred metres.

Small arms fire was spattering in the mud around the troopers - the Jouryans knew better than to try to engage in a fire-fight at this range but one or two still fell, the steel rain cutting them down as they advanced. A couple of shots rang off the hull of the Executioner, sharp steel dints against the grinding of the engine and the crunching as the tracks rode over the remains of previous a.s.saults. There were deadmen in the mud below them, Elysians and Enforcement Division troops mixed with gnarled Septiam limbs, along with weapons and equipment dropped by dead hands. No matter what happened, there would be a new layer of Jouryan dead added to it before long. Fifty metres.

If this had been a normal city the fleet would have obliterated it from orbit. But previous experience with Teturact's followers had shown that would just have given them a ruined warren of hiding places for the corpses to rise from. It had to be done the old-fas.h.i.+oned way, with troopers on foot bayonet-ing every one of them and burning the remains.

Sens.h.i.+ni could just make out the yells of front-line officers as they lined their squads and platoons up with their designated attack points on the defences. Some would try to climb vertical marble rooftops with ropes and had climbing gear slung over their shoulders. Others would slog their way up crumbling slopes. Sapper units would try to go through or under, their task considered the most dangerous of all.

The targeting reticule showed the range in the bot-tom corner. Sens.h.i.+ni knew he was close enough. For a second more he let the Executioner trundle on, bringing a few more metres of wall within the blastgun's reach.

'Squadron Six gunner, in range.' said Sens.h.i.+ni.

'This is Squadron Six command.' echoed Kaito into the vox. 'Ready to fire.'

'Squadron Six, fire.' came command's response.

'Fire!' yelled Kaito, and Sens.h.i.+ni slammed the fir-ing lever down.

The reticule was filled with light, streaming from above and behind as the coils emptied their ma.s.sive charges through the blastgun barrel. The energy was focused into a compacted bolt of superheated plasma, white-hot and liquid, which was spat with tremendous force towards the wall of column sec-tions in Sens.h.i.+ni's sights.

Huge column drums toppled, forming a landslide of carved stone, the sections rolling into the mud at the foot of the wall, kicking up great crescents of filth. Liquid plasma burst into a storm of lethal droplets, seething through the gaps between the stone. Figures tumbled down the ruined wall, bod-ies breaking or dissolving as the plasma hit them. Sh.e.l.ls from the other squadrons nearby, and the longer-ranged tanks behind, slammed into the stone, splintering the marble and kicking more col-umn sections down into the mud.

The troops to either side sped up, squads holding back to cover the advancing units. Lasgun fire spat-tered up towards the walls and heavy weapon units sent frag missiles and airburst mortars filling the air on the battlements with shrapnel.

The enemy took just a few moments to recover. The column stacks were broken but not completely breached. Sens.h.i.+ni could see dozens and dozens of small dark figures dressed in rags, like insects swarming from under the bark of a tree.

The coils behind Sens.h.i.+ni thrummed as they recharged and the tracks groaned in complaint as Tanako forced the tank over the churned earth by the walls, following the units that were running for the cover of fallen masonry as autogun and lasgun fire rattled down towards them. Shots were spatter-ing off the Executioner's front armour, and components were sparking and shorting out in the crew compartment.

Tanako spat an ancient Jouiyan curse as tiny flames licked from his control consoles. A cold chemical smell filled the compartment as Kaito smothered the fire with a handheld extinguisher.

Sens.h.i.+ni watched as a vicious, swirling fight was born amongst the fallen stone of the broken wall. The enemy had the numbers, hundreds of ragged pasty-skinned men and women clambering over the blocks and taking cover amongst the crevices, but each Jouryan carried better firepower and had far better discipline than his opposite in the city. Offi-cers formed fire lines to support the units advancing into the rubble.

a.s.sault teams hurled demo charges into knots of enemies, before charging with bayo-nets and feeding a brutal, swirling, close-order sc.r.a.p that swelled at the. base of the wall.

The old-fas.h.i.+oned way. No matter what the Mechanicus could cook up or the Navy could send into orbit, when it came down to it you needed a bayonet and some guts to win a war. For the briefest moment Sens.h.i.+ni wished he were down there in the heart of the fighting, lasgun in his hand - but he could see men stumbling with limbs severed or entrails spilling, and he knew he should be glad there were several layers of armour between him and the hail of fire raking down into the Jouryans.

"This is Squadron Command.' crackled the vox. 'I need a visual on Squadron Twenty.'

Twenty?' replied Kaito. 'This is Squadron Six, they won't be this far up front yet.'

'We've lost contact with Squadron Twenty. Report in a visual, we need them deployed at the wall.'

It made no sense. Squadron Twenty was a rear echelon squadron, consisting of three stripped-down Chimera transports crewed by medical corps officers. They would race up to the front line when the first wave of the attack had gone in, picking up the wounded and taking them back to the casualty stations to therear of the Jouiyan lines. Sens.h.i.+ni hated to think what would go through the minds of the a.s.saulting troops if they knew their only hope of any kind of rapid medical attention had been lost somewhere in the rearward echelons.

'Gunner! Emplacement, thirty degrees high!'

Sens.h.i.+ni yanked on the vertical lever and the viewpoint swung upwards, framing a precarious section of the wall where several enemies were load-ing sh.e.l.ls into a field gun that fired almost point-blank into the Jouryans battling to get a foothold in the rubble below. Sens.h.i.+ni took a rang-ing, correcting up a few metres, and fired. The plasma discharged with a roar and the emplace-ment disappeared in a bursting blister of plasma.

Armour was coming up beside the Executioner, a Demolisher to help crack the wall open further and an Exterminator, twin autocannons barking rapidly as they sent shrapnel bursting amongst the enemy scrambling down the rubble slope. A pair of Chimeras streaked by, tracks kicking up sprays of dirt, and a Valkyrie roared overhead, belly compart-ment full of storm troopers to exploit a full breach further up the wall.

'Gak me sideways.' said Tanako from below. That's Squadron Twenty!'

Sens.h.i.+ni swung the targeting array down to catch sight of the rear of a Chimera as it drove headlong for the walls, the staff-and-snake symbol of the medical corps stencilled on its rear ramp. A third Chimera with the same markings drove by a moment later, its driver recklessly gunning the engine and crunching through the gears as it rode over the crest of a sh.e.l.l crater.

'Take us closer, Tanako.' ordered Kaito. 'Sens.h.i.+ni, close support fire, they're pinned down. And get onto command, tell them we've found Squadron Twenty.'

The Executioner lurched forward. The stink of the recharging coils surrounded Sens.h.i.+ni, and he could feel the greasy grime caking on his bare hands and face. The viewpoint swung violently and he caught a glimpse of the top hatch of Squadron Twenty's closest Chimera swinging open.

Heavy-calibre fire spattered from the open hatch. Sens.h.i.+ni spotted dark figures tumbling down the rubble slope. The volume of fire was ma.s.sive and shocking, ripping into the Septiams on the slopes. It was accurate, too, and Sens.h.i.+ni saw Septiam's fall. No lasgun could blow a man apart like that, not even the h.e.l.lguns of the Guard elites.

That's not medical corps.' said Sens.h.i.+ni, mostly to himself.

The Executioner was within easy small arms fire of the wall and shots rang loudly off the upper plates, kicking chunks of armour from the hull. Sens.h.i.+ni caught glimpses of the closest enemy, sheltering in the cover of fallen column sections as they swapped fire with the Jouryans - dressed in rags, skin pale and torn, covered in old open wounds that didn't bleed. He saw tatters of finery and Enforcement Division uniforms.

Opaque grey eyes took aim. Hands with missing fingers held hunting rifles and salvaged Elysian lasguns.

Every single dead man was walking again, and fighting too - the whole of Septiam City and half a regiment of butchered Elysians, lost Jouryan patrols, workers from the now-ruined soulfire fields. The commanders had expected a fraction of the city's inhabitants still to be waiting at the walls. But now Sens.h.i.+ni could see there were thousands of them, streaming down the breach into the advanc-ing Jouryans like bloodants from a nest.

A storm of laser fire was like burning red st.i.tches between the fallen blocks. Lascannon shots streaked from Jouryan armour moving up and explosions st.i.tched the rubble slope where mortar and anti-tank volleys. .h.i.t home.

The Executioner juddered to a halt. Sens.h.i.+ni lined up another shot, paused to check the coils had charged, and sent another blastgun shot ripping into a knot of Septiams huddling in the cover of a fallen marble block.

Two squads of Jouryans, no longer pinned down by the enemy fire, ran forward through the falling debris.

The Chimeras of Squadron Twenty skidded to a halt in a slew of mud. The top hatches and rear ramps swung open and the occupants leapt out, guns blazing.

'Looks like we got some glory boys.' said Sens.h.i.+ni. 'They must've given Squadron Twenty to the storm troopers.'

But they weren't storm troopers, Sens.h.i.+ni realised. They were huge figures, much larger than a man, and in the few seconds before grime and flying mud turned them into a spattered dark grey he saw that they wore purple, not the dull fatigues of the Jouryans.

'Shenking gakrats.' swore Sens.h.i.+ni. 'Marines.'

Kaito opened the observer hatch and dared to poke his head up into the shrapnel-filled air. He pulled a pair of field gla.s.ses from inside his coat. Sens.h.i.+ni was sure he heard a cheer go up from the Jouryan attackers, even over the din of gunfire, as the s.p.a.ce Marines charged into battle beside them. Every Guardsman had heard of the Adeptus Astartesand some even claimed to have seen them on the batdefield, superhuman warriors who could strike like lightning into the heart of the enemy, wore ma.s.sive powered armour and had the best weapons the Imperium could provide. Preachers extolled them as paragons of humankind. Children swapped stories about their exploits. They deco-rated a million stained gla.s.s windows and sculpted friezes in temples and basilica across the Imperium, and now they were here on Septiam Torus.

After a long couple of seconds Kaito dropped back into the tank. 'Right, Command have sent us some s.p.a.ce Marines. It's the first and last time we'll see these b.u.g.g.e.rs so we're going to close in and support them. If that breach can fall, they're going to be the ones to take it. Tanako, as close as you can. Sen-s.h.i.+ni, I want plasma at the top of the wall, give these freaks nowhere to run. Fire at will, Now!'

The Executioner roared into the shadow of the walls, rumbling past the fallen column sections and crunching through the dead of the a.s.sault, heading for the maelstrom of the breach where the s.p.a.ce Marines were weaving a new kind of h.e.l.l amongst the Septiams.

Jouryans were rallying all around, following the Executioner into the storm of fire, officers yelling at their men to follow in the Marines' wake. Sens.h.i.+ni sighted the heart of the breach where the corpse-like Septiams were ma.s.sed, thrown back by the shock of the renewed a.s.sault.

Sens.h.i.+ni fired the blastgun and plasma erupted as if from beneath the rubble. He spotted the Marines scrambling up the burning slope, boltguns chewing through the swarming Septiams, and he knew the battle for Septiam City was on.

Everything was cold. Thaddeus couldn't feel his hands or feet. For a horrible moment he thought he might have lost them to frostbite or shrapnel flying from the disintegrating cathedral, but then a p.r.i.c.kly, electrical pain flashed through the nerves of his arms and legs and he knew that he was whole.

He tried tensing the muscles he could feel, expect-ing a sunburst of pain to tell him of a broken limb or a ruptured organ. He couldn't find any obvious injuries, but he was constricted. He thought he might be lying down but he couldn't sit up or turn his head. Although the numbness from the cold kept him from being sure, it felt like his hands were encased in something that stopped him even mov-ing his fingers.

He smelled chemicals. Preservatives, disinfectants, a substance that smelled rusty and metallic like something distilled from blood. Ruthlessly clean and sterile.

At first he thought there was no sound - but grad-ually he picked out layers of soft noise, fluorescent buzzing, the faint irregular ticking and scratching from some machine near his head, a faint dripping of liquid.

Finally, he tried to pry his eyes open. A slash of light burned across his vision and it was several minutes before he could begin to see - he must have been unconscious for some time and his eyes were barely able to adjust to the light. He seemed to be looking up at a square of pure light, until gradu-ally a pair of glowstrips coalesced in the centre of a white-painted ceiling.

The walls were also white. The floor was polished metal with channels leading to a central drain to bleed away unwanted fluids - this alone told Thad-deus he was in a medical facility. The machine by his head was a medical servitor, a biological brain somewhere in its chromed casing telling the arma-tures jutting from its front to scribble Thaddeus's life-signs onto a long strip of parchment that spooled from the machine.

Several cylinders were racked on one wall, thin transparent tubes feeding odd-coloured fluid into the gauntlets that covered his hands and wrists. The gauntlets were medical contraptions that kept veins in his hands and wrists open to keep medication flowing into him. The pains he had felt were the occasional probing of neurosensors adhering to his skin, triggering pain receptors intermittently to check his nervous system was still working.

Thaddeus listened harder. Beneath the faint thrum of the lighting and the ticking of the medical machinery, there was a distant rumbling, like a thunderstorm over the horizon. Engines - he was on a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p, then. It made sense, seeing as the last place he remembered being was in s.p.a.ce.

There was a faint chiming as the light on the life signs machine blinked in response to Thaddeus's waking.

A few minutes later the room's single fea-tureless door slid open and Lord Inquisitor Kolgo walked in.

Kolgo seemed weak and wizened outside his cer-emonial armour. He wore shapeless dark robes like a monk's habit, and the neuro-interfaces were red and raw on the back of his head where his armour was normally connected. To anyone else he would just look like another old man - but Thaddeus could see the authority Kolgo still carried with him, the indefinable quality that made even fellow inquisitors accept his command.

Kolgo pulled a chrome-plated chair close to the bed, and sat down.

'You are most determined, Thaddeus,' he said. 'I confess we really didn't antic.i.p.ate you going this far.'

There was a faint note of amus.e.m.e.nt in his voice.

The Hereticus gave me a job to do,' replied Thad-deus, his voice raw and painful in his throat. 'Anyinquisitor would have done the same.'

Kolgo shook his head, almost sadly. 'Our mistake was both underestimating and overestimating you, Thaddeus. Underestimated because we thought that your skills were not yet well developed enough to allow you to pursue the Soul Drinkers as closely as you have. Overestimated because we thought you would be quicker to develop a sense for the conse-quences of your actions. The Inquisitorial remit is theoretically limitless, but Thaddeus, for the Throne's sake - Pharos? After I told you how deli-cate our situation with the Mechanicus was. The d.a.m.n place only blew seventy-two hours ago and already sub-battlefleet Aggarendon has lost three s.h.i.+ps to the withdrawal of tech-priest support. Ordi-natus units on Calliargan and Vogel are about to fall silent. The Mechanicus are convinced that Teturact somehow got at Pharos and the tech-guard presence there has been tripled.'

'You have your objectives, Kolgo, I have mine.'

'Ah yes, the Soul Drinkers. Presumably you know why you were given the task of tracking them down.'

'Because I could do it. And because I work differ-ently from Tsouras.'

Kolgo reached up to the life signs machine and made an adjustment. The medi-gauntlets around Thaddeus's hands cracked open and there were sev-eral pinp.r.i.c.ks of pain as the sensors and needles were withdrawn.

Warmth seeped back into Thad-deus's body and he felt he could move again - he flexed his fingers and arms, and gradually sat up. He was aching and tired, but there was no more pain than there should be.

'We chose you, Thaddeus.' said Kolgo with an unforgivable twinkle in his eye, 'because we knew you would fail. We knew you would keep your dis-tance, tailing the Soul Drinkers and gathering information without actually striking. You are a watcher, Thaddeus, a listener. A good one, too. But not a victor.'

You didn't want them stopped.'

'Oh, we did. I and the inner circles of the Ordo Hereticus recognise the Soul Drinkers as a grave threat and it is entirely our intention to corner and destroy them. But not just yet. Think about it, Thad-deus. We estimate the Soul Drinkers Chapter is between half and three-quarters strength, with no chance of reinforcement. That gives us a maximum of seven hundred and fifty s.p.a.ce Marines with barely a handful of surviving Chapter serfs if the evi-dence from the scuttled fleet is anything to go by. My household's own staff numbers more than three times that. The storm troopers attached directly to my command outnumber the Soul Drinkers tenfold.

's.p.a.ce Marines from preachers' sermons can take on entire armies on their own but the truth is rather different. Without the support of other Imperial forces, or hordes of cultists or secessionists, or legions of daemons, they are alone and vulnerable. There is no point being the head of the spear if there is no haft or driving hand to back you up. The Soul Drinkers are dangerous but compared to someone like Teturact, they really are of little con-sequence. And there are many creatures like Teturact loose in the galaxy, I am afraid to say.'

'So you sent me after them because they aren't important.'

'On the contrary, Thaddeus. They could be very important. Regardless of the truth,. s.p.a.ce Marines are legends. Traitor Marines are a nightmare. There is something so inherently heretical in the very con-cept that it carries with it far greater power than the actual Marines in question.'

Thaddeus should have felt betrayed and used. But he felt neither in particular - he just felt small, like a tiny wheel in a huge machine. It was a strange, dry feeling, as if his blood had been drained and replaced with dust. All his life he had worked for the Inquisition, battling against the vastness of the galaxy in a quest to make a difference. But now, with Lord Inquisitor Kolgo sitting next to him and explaining how he was just a p.a.w.n in better men's games, the galaxy seemed vaster than ever.

They are a weapon.' said Thaddeus, his voice tired. 'A political weapon.'

Kolgo smiled, almost like a father. 'I knew you would realise it eventually. It surprised me you didn't get it more quickly The Soul Drinkers are political capital - an enemy with the symbolic power of a renegade Chapter is not to be destroyed lightly. There will be times when the Ordo Hereti-cus must fight its corner against the rest of the Imperium, for the Imperium is almost as likely to harbour enemies as the ranks of the heretic and the alien. When that happens, we need the power of such symbols to prove our worth in the eyes of the lesser-minded of the Emperor's servants. The Soul Drinkers are to be destroyed when it would bring us the most benefit, and when that time comes we will bring more and better minds to bear than yours.'

1 understand.' said Thaddeus. 'I am expected to track the Soul Drinkers but not to move on them until you give the word.'

'It will be a long time before you really under-stand.' Kolgo stood up and, as if on command, a pair of valet servitors trundled in, their low bodies sprouting long, thin manipulators that held the simple, dark leatherbodyglove and blastcloak of an interrogator. 'You will be taken back to the fortress at Caitaran and rea.s.signed. We need competent minds like yours in the warzone. The trip will take about three weeks - I'm afraid I can only offer clothes such as these and few comforts, I keep a very simple s.h.i.+p.'

'The data I collected. It was in a data-slate in a pocket of my HE suit. Do you have it?'

'Everything you were wearing was lost. Only your sidearm was robust enough to survive. A very nice piece, if I may say, particularly the ammunition. I have it in my armoury here.'

'No matter.' said Thaddeus, hoping Kolgo couldn't tell when he was lying. 'It didn't contain anything important.'

But in a way it was true. Thaddeus only remem-bered two names from the reams of data he had salvaged, but they were the most important infor-mation of all. The first was Karlu Grien, a Magos Biologis who was the only surviving adept to have worked in a certain isolated genetor facility. The sec-ond was the name of the facility itself: Stratix Luminae.

Septiam City burned. The Gathalamorian artillery had lobbed incendiary charges into the presumed hotspots of defenders - the palace quarter, the sen-ate buildings, the Enforcement Division barracks -and raging firestorms had engulfed the flammable hovels that crowded against the city's once-grand buildings. But far worse were the fires the defenders themselves had set. They didn't need to breathe as normal men did, so tottering piles of plague dead were lit to fill the streets with banks of greasy stink-ing smoke. Ammunition and fuel dumps were rigged to blow and the first elements of the Stratix XXIII through the defences to the north found themselves in a nightmare of b.o.o.by-traps and flam-ing debris. The Jouryans entered through the southern quarter, which was composed of the more s.p.a.cious gardens and townhouses of Septiam Torus's middle cla.s.ses, so they moved faster and fur-ther when the breaches were taken.

At their head were their unexpected allies, the s.p.a.ce Marines who had arrived at the largest breach at the critical moment and punched through the defences like a dagger. Few Jouryans asked what had happened to the crews and medics of Squadron Twenty - all they saw were purple-armoured war-riors a head taller than any Guardsman, who charged ahead with insane speed and seemed almost desperate to come to grips with the enemy face to face.

The Stratix XXIII found themselves bogged down in the sprawling dwellings to the north. The homes of dead soulfire harvesters became room-to-room battlegrounds where dug-in weapons teams shred-ded Stratix troopers at intersections and in open s.p.a.ces, where tripwires rigged with demo charges blunted a.s.saults long enough for the Septiams to counter-attack.

But the Stratix XXIII had all lived out childhoods in the vicious underhives of their lost homeworld, and were happier fighting with bayonet and guile than out in the open. For many of them it was like coming home, and the Stratix were slowly, savagely, bleeding the Septiams dry, drawing more and more enemies from the south of the city into a meat grinding killing zone. Most of their officers were dead - but they had mostly been outsiders brought in by the Guard to tame the savages, and the Stratix fought this battle better on their own.

The Jouryans made good speed through to the palace quarter, which had formed the elegant mar-ble core of the city before death and disease turned the place into a charnel house mockery of splen-dour. Grand buildings stripped of their roofs formed sheer-walled canyons of priceless marble, often with gilded decorations still coiling gracefully along the scorched stone. Tanks rumbled through the broader streets and blasted the ill-disciplined Septiam snipers off the tops of the walls.

A brutal jungle fight erupted between several Jouryan platoons and the blood-streaked retinue of a corrupted Septiam n.o.ble in the lush botanical gardens of a senator's villa. The n.o.ble hunted Jouryans with a silver-chased groxrifle in his rotting hands while the Jouryans waded through a tiny square of death-world terrain. One of the city's forums became a critical objective for staging armoured thrusts towards the senate-house, and Guardsmen fought almost toe-to-toe with thou-sands of Septiams over a s.p.a.ce barely a hundred metres wide. Leman Russ tanks formed mobile strong-points to hold courtyards and gardens as Jouryan platoons leapfrogged from one shattered residence to the next. Wounded men drowned in ornamental pools. Sh.e.l.ls airburst in the boughs of trees in the city parks and killed dozens with splin-ters of exotic hardwood.

And at the front of the slowing tide of Jouryans were the s.p.a.ce Marines, charging into labyrinthine villas with bolters blazing and chainswords spark-ing on the stone, flus.h.i.+ng concentrations of walking dead out into Jouryan fire-zones and tak-ing strong-points for the Guardsmen to occupy behind them.

The Jouryans followed them, because any man who valued his life chose to consolidate the path of destruction they blazed rather then venture into the enemy-held quarters.

When the Marines veered to one side and began to fight their way towards the Enforcement Divis...o...b..rracks instead of the senate house, the Jouryans backed them up with little argument from senior officers who were having trouble following the rapid advance anyway. The smooth, towering walls of the barracks formed a formidable barrier between the attackers, and the plan had been for the Jouryans to bypa.s.s the fortified compound entirely, leaving it to elements of Gathalamorian artillery to move up and hurl high explosives over the wall until the barracks were dust.

The s.p.a.ce Marines had other plans. When they went into direct a.s.sault against the most fortified structure in Septiam City, the Jouryans began to wonder why the s.p.a.ce Marines were actually here.

'Over the wall! Now!' yelled Captain Karraidin, a huge tank-like figure in his Terminator armour, waving the a.s.sault Marines forward with his enor-mous power fist.

Tellos knew that was his cue. He wasn't a sergeant any more - he had no rank at all, not even battle-brother, officially. But the a.s.sault Marines of the Soul Drinkers followed him anyway, because to them there was no better symbol of the resolve that had taken the Chapter so far. Tellos was more severely mutated and crippled than any of them, and yet he loved nothing better than to be at the forefront of the a.s.sault where he could do the Emperor's work in destroying His enemies. He was an inspiration. He was the very tip of the spear.

Tellos broke cover and sprinted from the shadows of the collapsed Administratum building across the corpse-littered road from the barracks wall. He wore no armour on the upper half of his body and the wind was hot and grimy against his skin, sharp and painful against the stumps of still-red flesh where his hands had once been. He had lost both hands during the betrayal when the Soul Drinkers had first been forced to turn against the Imperium. Now he had replaced them with twin chainblades from the Chapter armoury, old-pattern chainswords with broad, curved blades like machetes.

Gunfire spattered down from the Septiams man-ning an autocannon post on the wall, surrounded by razor wire. Shrapnel and a couple of shots. .h.i.t Tellos but they pa.s.sed right through his shockingly white, strangely gelatinous flesh, cutting through skin and muscle that knitted itself back together again leaving scores of tiny white scars.

A burning Leman Russ tank had crashed into the wall, its blazing form" reaching halfway up the wall.