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Chapter 2: The Counter-Attack Begins
The Cultist snarled as he threw himself forward into the crater, the swing of his blade arcing through the air as it sped toward its target. Brother Dalian managed a tight grin as he almost laconically raised his armoured gauntlet and swatted the weapon aside with a harsh splintering of broken bones. The Cultist howled in anguish he doubled over, clutching his gnarled hand in a burning mixture of pain and rage. Dalian deftly side-stepped the oncoming bayonet of another heretic and crunched his knee upwards into the scarred face of the first Cultist, deftly snapping the creature’s neck. Without a grunt of effort he wrenched the las-rifle out of the second Cultist's hands, whipped the stock of the weapon around and swung it butt-first into the chin of its previous owner. The maniac went down with barely a whimper. Dalian continued to chant the Litany of Battle as he raised his bolter and sent an incandescent spray of death into the ranks of the enemy.
The enemy had broken, but the battle was far from over. The detachment of Ultramarines in this sector, two dozen men strong, was still grossly outnumbered as they purged the enemy. Dalian smiled again in spite of the situation: they were always outnumbered. He snapped a shot off toward a fleeing traitor, whose head ruptured like an over-ripe melon. Always outnumbered, never outgunned.
As the Ultramarines slid from cover to cover through the graveyard of broken Imperial war-machines, the sheer brutality of their effectiveness became apparent. Clumps of the fleeing enemy, broken remnants of a once effective fighting unit were gunned down mercilessly as they fled. There could be no forgiveness for the heretic. Those wretched few who survived the stream of bolter shells escaped only to scurry headlong into the relentless artillery of their own forces, which drove on incessantly. The bombardment, which occasionally managed to knock a Marine down with a sporadic stray shell, served only to sprinkle the armour of the Emperor’s Finest with of dust. The Space Marines were masters of the battlefield, and as such knew to crouch tightly behind whatever available shelter could be offered by the terrain. The Cultists, lacking this training and entirely bereft of morale, could only howl in terror as they were sliced to ribbons by shrapnel in the open-ground.
‘Brother Marius, cease your advance and withdraw immediately. Execute withdrawal pattern 23.’ intoned the strong baritone of Veteran-Brother Calinor in Dalian’s ear.
The command echoed over the Ultramarine’s personal battle net, prompting the colossal Dreadnaught to wheel about and plod steadily away from the carnage. The Dreadnaught's autocannon continued to whirl a fiery stream of bullets toward the enemy as he withdrew. The ancient veteran entombed within the metal sarcophagus did not question his orders, for he was easily the most experienced warrior here. Marius’ frame, three times the height of a man, possessed a spectacularly high target profile on the battlefield, and would only serve as a range marker for the enemy gun emplacements.
The withdrawal of Marius thus complete, that left only twenty Space Marines in power armour against some fifty-odd Cultists and at least a hundred dug-in traitors. Even so, mused Dalian as he settled into a new firing position and picked off another target, the Tactical Squads were not entirely without support…
In the midst of the Chaos position, orders were roared up and down the line, as Traitor Guardsmen attempted to zero mortar fire and other ground-based artillery on top of the advancing Ultramarines. The wind was against them, however, and the gun crews swore vehemently in frustration as their shots were idly flung off target by the wind. As such, all the short-range artillery achieved was to gouge a series chunks and craters out of the one hundred metre clearing that lay between the Chaos position and the tangled maze of smoking vehicles.
The officer in charge of the recently formed Eridorian Marauders, Colonel Herizor, took this in and his eye twitched in irritation. His shelling was achieving nothing, and this wasn’t helping morale. He cast a glance around the glum atmosphere of his trench. No, things weren’t working out as planned.
Another shell impacted near the rim of the trench, sending a towering pillar of muck and scorched earth into the sky, causing his men to flinch. Herizor didn’t bat an eyelid. He glowered at his cowardly men. And then he smiled: a plan was forming.
Herizor’s racing thoughts were interrupted by commotion behind him. He twisted around and gazed into the depths of the trench. Herizor’s second in command, a squat man called Pak, was rushing to and fro, grabbing soldiers by the wrist and whispering urgently in their ears. He sighed to himself as his staff-sergeant began to renew his gibbering at the sound of dying screams drifting in over the trench from the distance.
’Is something the matter, Pak?’ he asked, his voice laced with malice.
‘T-t-he end is coming, sir!’ stammered Pak, ‘We must withdraw!’
Heads in the trenches began to nod in agree to this assessment: they had seen too much death. A few got to their feet and threw their las-guns aside.
‘Withdraw, Pak? These are Imperials we face. We are traitors, turncoats,’ his mottled lips curled with a delight at the next word,’… heretics. There will be no quarter if, and indeed when, they capture us. We will stay and fight, Pak, or we will stay and die.’
Pak drew himself up to the height of his 5 feet and four inches. His voice, though tinged with fear, was clear and haughty.
‘Then, with respect sir, I’ll take my chances.’
The sergeant bolted.
Herizor wearily drew his bolt-pistol and peered down the iron-sight, then waited. He’d let Pak get out into full view of the entire line first. There was a pause.
There.
Herizor nailed the deserting officer with a single bolt-round in the base of the skull. A ripple of shock rippled through the Marauder’s rank and file.
‘You will fight,’ he barked aloud, his glare almost daring men to run ‘or you will die. There can be no compromise in our quest for power. You will fight like the warriors you are, loyal subjects to the Black Legion, and you shall fight to end. Such is expected of a Marauder.’
The men around him, rendered pale and gaunt from weeks of endless combat, could only shudder and grimly resume their positions. Some hesitated, but Herizor fixed them with his most terrifying gaze, and they quickly fell back into position. Herizor, though not a particularly intelligent man, was an ambitious one. He would see to it that the forces of the Emperor fall, deserters or no deserters. His Commander would expect no less.
He had been blessed with enough tactical foresight to perceive that his bombardment was ineffectual against his as-of-yet invisible opponent, and quickly ordered the artillery to shift their focus. Instead of lightly peppering the entirety of the vehicle yard, he would have his shells savagely blanket the comparably smaller clearing in front of them. He had no idea about what had incited the agonised shrieks of his dying men at the far end of the battlefield, but he also had no intention of letting them get near him without having them waltz through a curtain of fire first.
‘Brother Calinor, why are we stopped?’ hissed Brother Julian, one of the younger space marines, ‘we have them routed, we should attack!’
‘Do not mistake a fleeing enemy for a defeated one, Brother Julian,’ chided the Apothecary Kerisor, ‘Calinor knows what he is doing.’
Calinor did not acknowledge his younger comrade as he activated his vox-link:
‘Sergeant Tarl, tell me what you see.’
‘This is Tarl,’ he hissed into his vox-link,’ we’ve infiltrated behind the enemy line, have eyes on multiple targets. Say the word and we shall engage.’
Calinor’s reply crackled through his head set, ‘I need those enemy guns silenced, Brother.’
Tarl clicked the vox-unit twice in acknowledgement. Ask, thought Tarl as he sighted on the head of a Chaos artillery officer, and you shall receive...
