Space Marine Battles - the Novels Volume 1 Read online

  ‘Brother Koban,’ Kor’sarro addressed the pilot. The Space Marine’s face was a mask of determination as he battled with the gunship’s controls. Kor’sarro knew that the pilot was nearing the bounds of his endurance. ‘Draw your strength from your ancestors,’ Kor’sarro shouted over the roaring winds and the wailing alerts. ‘Have faith in the primarch!’

  ‘Honoured be his name!’ the pilot replied by rote, visibly emboldened by his captain’s words. The Space Marine redoubled his efforts, mastering the bucking control column, and the gunship responded instantly. The buffeting calmed, and in moments the white flames licking the outside of the canopy faded and danced away.

  ‘My thanks, brother-captain,’ the pilot said, nodding his head towards Kor’sarro.

  ‘You have but yourself to thank,’ Kor’sarro replied. ‘And the Great Khan, honoured be his name.’

  As the last of the flames engulfing the Thunderhawk’s blunt, armoured prow flickered and died, the surface of Cernis IV became visible again. The entire view from the cockpit was now filled with the pure, glittering whiteness of the planet’s northern polar region. Where before the surface had appeared to shimmer with reflected light, Kor’sarro could discern individual points of jagged, violet-hued brightness. Each of these was a towering crystalline formation, some as tall as a man, others rearing hundreds of metres in the cold air. Each crystal tower reflected the violet auroras that pulsated in the skies above, casting the entire region in an unearthly light.

  The Techmarines had been unable to identify the material from which the crystals were formed, but warned that they were clustered so densely across the northern pole that they presented a significant threat to a successful planetfall operation. The remote likeliness of any force attempting such a mission in the perilous region had simply added to its desirability, as far as Kor’sarro was concerned, and the order had been given.

  ‘Landing zone identified,’ the co-pilot announced.

  ‘Altering course,’ the pilot replied, bringing the gunship around to the coordinates scrolling across his command slate. ‘Brother-captain?’

  Kor’sarro confirmed that the other four Thunderhawks of the strike force were in formation. One was trailing a line of thick black smoke from its starboard engine. None of the Thunderhawks had come through the drop untouched and there was little that could be done now. He could not even risk a vox-transmission to determine the extent of the gunship’s wound. Only faith in the Great Khan would see them through.

  ‘Final approach,’ Kor’sarro ordered.

  On his word, the gunship banked before diving for the frozen surface. The landscape rushed upwards dramatically as the Thunderhawk’s air brakes shed the vessel’s momentum. In minutes, the largest of the crystal towers were discernable, their multi-faceted, mirror-smooth flanks reflecting light in all directions.

  ‘Beginning approach run,’ the pilot said, his attentions focused on the closing towers. As the Thunderhawk levelled out the pilot fed power to the engines. Crystals the size of cathedrals flashed by on all sides, and for an instant Kor’sarro was assailed by the sight of a thousand gunships flying in an insane formation all about. There was no way of telling which were the real vessels and which were reflections on the mirrored surfaces of the crystal towers.

  ‘Adjust three-nine in eight point five,’ the co-pilot said, not taking his eyes from the augur screen before him.

  The pilot merely nodded, before yanking hard on the control column. Kor’sarro’s seat restraints tensed as his weight was thrown suddenly to port, but to his relief they held. The largest crystal tower Kor’sarro had yet seen flashed by the gunship’s starboard. Due to its multiple, reflective faces, the crystal had not been visible by eyesight. Only the co-pilot’s augur warning had saved the vessel from being smashed to atoms against its sheer side.

  ‘That was too close,’ breathed the pilot. ‘My apologies, brother-captain.’

  ‘None needed,’ Kor’sarro replied. ‘Attend to your duty.’

  The pilot returned his attentions to the fore, bringing the gunship into a wide turn that brought it around a huge crystal tower that Kor’sarro had not even seen amongst the riot of reflections. Leaving the tower behind, the pilot corrected the heading, Kor’sarro craning his neck to ensure that the other vessels were doing likewise.

  ‘Delta twelve!’ the co-pilot called out suddenly.

  The pilot heeded his battle-brother’s warning with instinctive speed. The Thunderhawk was thrown violently to starboard as the pilot avoided a needle-like tower that reared out of nowhere as if seeking to skewer the vessel. For the briefest moment, Kor’sarro caught sight of his own reflection in the needle’s mirrored surface as the formation flashed by mere metres away.

  Kor’sarro had no need to turn his head to look through the rear of the canopy in order to follow the progress of the other four gunships, for their reflections were all about, mirrored in a thousand glassy crystal flanks. One Thunderhawk pitched to starboard, while two went to port, the needle flashing by between. The last gunship, still trailing smoke from the engine damaged during the planetfall, was not so fast to react. To his great honour, the vessel’s pilot almost managed to avoid the crystal spire, but his starboard wing grazed it nonetheless. In an instant, the end of the stubby wing was shorn away, and the entire needle exploded into a million shards. The devastation was reflected from a thousand surfaces at once. Kor’sarro’s senses were all but overwhelmed as innumerable shards, both real and reflected, cascaded in all directions, impacting on the hull of his own gunship like anti-aircraft fire.

  ‘Hunter Three’s going down!’ the co-pilot called out. ‘I can’t get a reading, there’s too much interference from the shards.’

  Kor’sarro processed the terrible decision in an instant. Just as quickly, his mind was made up. ‘Maintain vox-silence,’ he ordered. ‘But keep the channels open.’

  The mission was all.

  ‘You are sure it is him?’ Kor’sarro had asked when informed that the object of his years-long hunt had once again been located. ‘You are sure this is not another of his traps?’

  ‘Yes, my khan, I am sure it is Voldorius,’ the Scout-sergeant replied. ‘Whether or not it is a trap, however…’

  ‘I understand, Kholka. You will forgive my impatience in this matter,’ Kor’sarro said. Taking a deep breath, he reined in his eagerness to resume the pursuit of this ancient nemesis of his Chapter. The Master of the Hunt must be keen-eyed and measured in all he does, Kor’sarro reminded himself, lest he blunder into a trap of his target’s making. ‘Please, deliver your report.’

  Scout-Sergeant Kholka looked from Kor’sarro to the black void beyond the strike cruiser’s armoured viewing port at which he stood. Kor’sarro allowed the veteran a moment to gather his thoughts, knowing that Kholka shared his own feelings in the matter. The stateroom in which the two warriors met was dark, its walls lined with the trophies of a score of victories. Displayed above the viewing port was the polished skull of a tyranid hive tyrant, a mighty beast which Kor’sarro himself had bested in lethal one-on-one combat. Lethal for the beast itself, Kor’sarro mused, memories of the climax of the Siege of Mysibis flooding back, but almost for him too. Even now, two decades later, the scars earned in that titanic confrontation still pained him.

  ‘We picked up his trail at Sinopha Station, on the fringes of the Protean Ebb,’ Kholka began. ‘The survivors’ accounts left us in no doubt that the attackers were Alpha Legion.’ The Scout-sergeant paused, evidently calling to mind the scenes of carnage and butchery at the station.

  ‘Go on, my friend,’ Kor’sarro urged. ‘How did you identify the traitors as belonging to Voldorius’s band?’

  ‘At first we had only the accounts to go by,’ Kholka continued. ‘But these were… unclear, as I am sure you can imagine.’

  Indeed I can, Kor’sarro thought. The Alpha Legion, erstwhile brothers of the Space Marines, had turned against the Imperium ten thousand years ago, and ever since their defeat in that ga
laxy-wide civil war they had waged a bitter campaign of terror on the peoples of the Imperium. The treacherous Alpha Legion were masters of insurrection and disorder, spreading the poison of rebellion wherever they went. They only left survivors when they intended accounts of their actions to spread panic across a wide area.

  ‘Those victims who were not killed in the attack were driven beyond sanity by the cruelties inflicted upon them,’ the sergeant said. ‘Others had been reduced to gibbering imbeciles by the traitors’ sorceries. Most were able to tell us very little. But one, who had served in the station’s watch-militia, had displayed the foresight to commit the initial stages of the attack to the archivum, and this we were able to retrieve.’

  ‘What of this man?’ Kor’sarro asked, even though he knew what the sergeant’s reply would be.

  ‘We granted him the Emperor’s peace,’ Kholka responded gravely. ‘His duty was done, and it was all we could do for him.’

  Kor’sarro nodded for the sergeant to continue.

  ‘The station’s archivum logs confirmed the identity of the attackers’ vessel.’

  ‘The Ninth Eye?’ Kor’sarro interjected. If it was indeed that hated ship that had delivered the Alpha Legion attackers to Sinopha Station, then the hunt for the daemon lord Voldorius was truly back under way, after so many galling months of cold trails and frustration.

  ‘The Ninth Eye,’ the sergeant confirmed. Kor’sarro watched Kholka as he paced before the viewing port, and paused before the skull of a fearsome ambull. ‘We set out immediately, and were able to pick up the vessel’s signature as it made for the jump point. Our astropath was able to track its jump, and our Navigator able to shadow it without our enemy becoming aware of our presence.’

  ‘You know this?’ Kor’sarro interrupted. ‘You are sure Voldorius was unaware of your pursuit?’

  ‘Salpo is, as you know, my khan, one of our most skilled Navigators. I have this on his word.’

  Kor’sarro allowed himself a feral grin, feeling his blood rise at the prospect of resuming the hunt. It had been almost a decade since Kyublai, Great Khan of the White Scars Chapter, had declared that the vile one Voldorius would be hunted down and slain in the name of the Emperor. As Captain of the Third Company and Master of the Hunt, it had fallen to Kor’sarro Khan to turn the Great Khan’s words into deeds. He had gone before the Great Khan and his court on the Chapter’s home world of Chogoris, and made a terrible oath.

  By Kor’sarro’s honour, the daemon prince Voldorius, he who had unleashed the Bloodtide and reaped a thousand billion innocent souls, would be brought to justice. As befitted the Chapter’s traditions, the traitor would be slain by the hand of the Master of the Hunt. His skull would be masked in silver and mounted at the tip of a lance. The trophy would be placed along the road to the White Scars’ fortress-monastery, alongside thousands more, high in the Khum Karta Mountains, where it would remain for all time as warning to those who would betray their oaths and turn their hand against the Emperor.

  Despite his savage desire to finally corner his foe, Kor’sarro bade the sergeant continue.

  ‘We tracked The Ninth Eye through three systems. It laid over at none, merely recalibrating before pressing on. Twelve days after the last jump, it entered the Cernis system, where it made for the fourth planet.’

  Kor’sarro had no knowledge of this star, for it was but a single, unremarkable system amongst over a million claimed by man. ‘What of this place?’ he asked.

  ‘Cernis IV is home to a small population of convicted sinners and petty transgressors, those whose sentences have been commuted from death to servitude.’ Kor’sarro scowled at the mental picture the sergeant’s description brought to mind. Scum, undeserving of a second chance. ‘Most eke out a nomadic existence as krill farmers, chasing the seasonal drifts along the coasts.’

  ‘And the rest?’ Kor’sarro asked, inferring that the Alpha Legion would have little interest in the convicts the sergeant described.

  ‘The rest are indentured to a substantial promethium refining operation at the world’s northern pole.’

  ‘And it is to this place that the enemy has retired,’ Kor’sarro growled, a statement, not a question. The sergeant’s expression confirmed his suspicion. Voldorius and his band of traitors had no doubt infiltrated the criminals that laboured at the promethium plant. That being the case, he could only assume that the world’s government, no doubt seated at the refinery, had been compromised, if not completely overthrown. He had to assume that the entire work force had been bribed, corrupted or coerced into serving the daemon prince, and it had probably not taken much effort to do so. The White Scars would be entering hostile territory as they closed on their foe.

  ‘My thanks, brother-sergeant,’ Kor’sarro said. ‘Your deeds do us all great honour, and the Great Khan shall hear of them.’ Kholka bowed deeply in response to the captain’s affirmation.

  ‘The word is given,’ Kor’sarro growled. ‘The hunt is on.’

  As the Thunderhawk banked past another great crystal tower, Kor’sarro caught sight of the target. The Cernis IV promethium plant loomed on the horizon, a vast stain upon a wide, frozen plain studded with smaller crystal formations. Even from twelve kilometres out, the plant was imposing. Vast storage tanks and processing stacks reared into the cold sky, the tallest belching dark fumes or flaring with alchemical burn-off. The plant was the size of a city, its buildings sprawling across the plain, each connected to the next by a complex web of pipes and conduits carrying raw promethium. With an expert eye, Kor’sarro assessed two rings of defence thrown up around the plant, each punctuated by squat bastions mounted with heavy ground and anti-air ordnance. Scout-Sergeant Kholka’s reports had been characteristically accurate.

  ‘Ten kilometres,’ the pilot reported. ‘Confirm attack pattern?’

  ‘As the moon swoops,’ Kor’sarro replied, using the battle-cant of the White Scars Chapter. As the Thunderhawk dived towards the white plain, the sun glinted from the ice, the glare masking the defenders from Kor’sarro’s sight. He still had only estimates of the defenders’ strengths to go on, and the attack pattern would allow the gunships to reconnoitre the plant’s defences before committing to a final run.

  The Thunderhawk levelled out as it streaked across the plain, the pilot jinking expertly to avoid the smaller crystal formations. At an altitude of only thirty metres, Kor’sarro could now discern the defence lines. Crudely fortified trenches had been dug into the snow, recently by his estimation. As the first line flashed by below, a storm of small-arms fire erupted, las-bolts pattering harmlessly against the gunship’s armoured hull.

  Kor’sarro activated his command terminal and invoked the view from a spy-lens mounted to the Thunderhawk’s rear. The pict-slate showed the view of the trench the gunship had just passed over, and Kor’sarro could make out troops manning its ramparts. There were hundreds of them packed into the makeshift position, yet it was immediately clear that they were not professional soldiers, in any sense of the word. For a start, they showed no discernable uniform, each wearing a ragged ensemble of rubberised work suit, with crude armour fashioned from steel plates. Many wore rebreathers, originally intended no doubt to protect against the fumes belched out by the refinery but pressed into service against the biting cold beyond the plant’s limits. For an instant, Kor’sarro thought he saw a fell rune of the Chaos powers, daubed crudely upon a soldier’s chest plate, but the view receded before he could be sure.

  ‘Closing on the second line,’ the pilot intoned. ‘Brace for heavy fire.’

  The second defence line was more heavily fortified than the first. The trenches were reinforced with armour plating, and rockcrete bunkers stood every two hundred metres.

  ‘Brace!’ the pilot called out.

  A searing line of fire suddenly cut through the air as an autocannon mounted on one of the bastions opened up. The shot was poorly aimed, passing clean through the White Scars’ formation without inflicting any damage.

  ‘That
was just a ranging shot,’ Kor’sarro growled, and immediately three more weapons, each mounted on a different bastion, opened fire.

  This time, the shots passed by far closer, inscribing a deadly web across the air space the gunships flew through.

  ‘That plotting is far too coordinated to be the work of recidivist scum,’ Kor’sarro said. ‘The Alpha Legion have been here before.’ How long, he could only guess, but certainly long enough to have overseen the construction of the inner line of trenches and to plot a highly effective air defence net. As the full extent of the defences revealed themselves, the autocannons barked again. This time, the air blazed with over a dozen bursts, and the Thunderhawk rocked violently as it was struck.

  ‘Taking effective fire!’ the pilot called out. ‘Implementing evasive manoeuvres.’

  Alarms blared out as the gunship’s aggrieved war spirit described its wounds. The Thunderhawk shook as the pilot undertook a series of jarring evasions, throwing the enemy gunners’ aim, for a brief moment at least.

  ‘Starboard control vanes compromised,’ the pilot announced as he fought the shaking control column.

  ‘And we’re bleeding fuel from engine beta,’ the co-pilot added.

  ‘Stand by,’ Kor’sarro ordered as he opened a vox-channel to the formation. There was little to be gained by maintaining vox silence now. ‘All Hunters, report.’

  ‘Hunter Two, Hunter One,’ the response came back immediately. ‘The arrow’s flight, shrouded by mist.’

  ‘Hunter Four, Hunter One,’ the next report came in, after the speaker had allowed an optimistic chance for Hunter Three to report. ‘The trail, winter rises.’

  ‘Hunter Five, Hunter One,’ the last gunship responded. ‘The crest by dawn.’

  ‘Damn them,’ Kor’sarro spat in response to the battle-cant reports. Hunter Two’s augurs were damaged, Four had lost pressure in at least one compartment and Hunter Five’s forward landing gear had taken a glancing hit. There was no word of Hunter Three.