Confrontation Part 2

For long weeks the two vessels, both Seraphim and Hawk Lord, traversed the gulf of real-space, carefully monitoring and avoiding the worst of the cyclonic violence that surrounded them. Despite the bold lilac and gold of their livery, the Hawk Lords were sons of Corvus Corax and waged their wars from the shade and shadows; their battle barge utilised arcane cloaking devices that Zarathustra jealously longed for his Techmarines to study. This shade field concealed the vessels from eye and augur, and Zarathustra’s sizeable Librarius Gnosis Conclave laboured night and day to hold at bay the strange psychic madness that infected the sector.

They heard it in every intercepted broadcast - ranting Tau, shrieking Eldar; they felt its malignant presence enclosing on all sides. It had the Hawk Lords in its grip when the Seraphim had intervened to assist against their Ork assailants; the calming bubble of sanity that accompanied Zarathustra’s vessel had gone a long way toward winning the Hawk Lord’s trust. The Librarian was convinced that the Key was at the heart of it all and hinted as such to Captain Auguste, commander of the Hawk Lords. He refrained from revealing the whole truth of his mission however – as far as their allies were concerned, restoring stability to the region was their primary objective.

The Key pulsed at the centre of everything; it drew in the madness as a collapsed star did light. Zarathustra followed its spoor.

The world was Terran grade and twin-mooned. It showed signs of prior habitation – ancient, frost-rimed satellites and orbital posts span silently along geo-stationary pathways – but it did not appear on any known star charts. Augur readings suggested the planet was largely lifeless.

Not entirely though. The wreckage of voidships hung in orbit, servitor-broadcast distress transmissions still emanating from them. The messages were broken and nearly unintelligible. Binaric cant bleated in loops from the surface, static ravaged warnings to stear clear of the planet. Zarathustra felt the Key’s pull and gave the signal to proceed.

Scout dropships, bearing proven killers from the conclaves of Shadow and Spite, peeled away towards the surface, inbound on co-ordinates provided by the Librarian. Captain Auguste dispatched auxiliary fighters to investigate the voidship wreckage, much to Zarathustra’s disapproval who saw any activity that did not directly aid them in recovering the key to be a waste of resources.

He did however take note of the reconnoitring Hawk Lord’s reports of emblems from the Space Wolves and a Dark Angel’s successor chapter of Astartes - alongside those of the Mechanicum of Mars - on the recently destroyed vessels with some interest.

Strike forces were organised and loaded into Thunderhawk dropships, Stormravens and Drop Pods; Zarathustra’s sizeable Librarius conclave remained on the Strike Cruisers, tasked with aiding their concealment and in keeping the madness at bay. When word came from the scouts, the Stigmata Seraphim and Hawk Lord’s command forces plunged like hail down into the planet’s atmosphere, while their voidships sank back into the blackness of the night, concealed amidst the detritus orbiting that forgotten world.

They put down in a hastily cleared dropsite, STC redoubts and firewalls erected by servitor ground-crews. Comms channels were cluttered by the mad and maddening binaric chatterings they had detected earlier. Translation was impossible – the broadcasts were little short of ranted gibberish.

The Seraphim scouts reported a force of Adeptus Mechanicus Archeologues, supported by a sizeable military force and a lance of Imperial Knights, patiently excavating a chamber some way to the north of the dropsite. The Mechanicus Maniple appeared to be the source of the transmissions. Clearly the madness had taken them. The key’s pull on Zarathustra’s mind left no doubt that they were excavating his prize. Time was short - they had to be stopped.

Captain Auguste asked if there was any sign of Adeptus Astartes forces present on-world, clearly mindful of the orbiting wreckage. The report came back – no.

It was clear that they needed to draw the Mechanicus and Knight forces from their excavation, and give a flanking force the chance to access the site unmolested. Seraphim Devastators of the Conclave of Fury, and Hawk Lord tactical marines, armed with lascannons and meltaguns and supported by a Librarian of Zarathustra’s staff, entrenched themselves on the high ground to the south of the Archeotech site; assault squads, assisted by sniper scouts of the Conclave of Spite, made their presence felt.

The response came with crushing speed and aggression; a gibbering Arch-Magos, flanked by cyborg Skitarii and bulky Kastelan Automatons marched forth, salvoes of fire streaking through the dawn air towards the marines. The Hawk Lords, clad in the last remnants of night, waited impassively. A trio of towering Imperial Knights, Reaper chainswords screaming to combat speed, and titanic Thunderstrike gauntlets crackling with pent-up fury, stomped before the Martians. They ploughed clods of earth the size of men from the plains and shattered stands of twisted trees into bright white splinters with their passing. The whole world seemed to shake at their tread.

They came as an inverse triangle, left and right, and their third bearing down hard upon the Librarian’s position in the centre. To the left a Hawk Lords tactical squad drove forward, seeking favourable position for their lascannon in an ancient stand of trees. Zarathustra’s Devastators lit up the dawn above their heads, blazing lasbeam and meltashot searing into the oncoming Knight’s flickering ion shield and ancient ceramite plate. Blinding flashes and molten sparks marked the points where their shots hit home.

On the right flank, the enormous armoured warrior laid eyes on a scout squad that sheltered amidst the shadows of an ancient bunker; with one swipe of its chainsword the Knight shattered age worn stone and forced the Seraphim into the open. The Knight brought its gauntlet around in a dismissive backswipe, crushing the marines explosively into the ruin. The squad sergeant, alone and alive, stood his ground and readied an armour-mocking melta bomb in his hands; with deceptive speed the Knight plucked him into the air and cast his burst remains away into the distance.

There were melta weapons in the hands of the tactical squad attached to the Librarian and he ordered them forward now to shore up the right flank. The Librarian strode ahead, hand outstretched, immaterial tendrils of raw warp energy beginning to coalesce as he sought to tear the armour from the Knight’s metal skeleton. The Knight stepped forward, wound up then lashed out with its other titanic foot. The Librarian’s Terminator armour flashed bright as his personal force field absorbed the blow – still the Knight's kick pitched the golden armoured figure through the air, a streaking comet in the morning sun, and he shattered a small twisted copse where he fell.

The barrage of Devastator fire engulfed the Knight on the left flank in a burning semi-sphere of light as it dispersed against the Knight's ion shield. The Hawk Lords stood their ground at his behemoth approach, las fire sparking from the Knight's framework. The towering Knight drew up before them, raised one enormous metal foot - as wide as the genetically modified marines stood tall - and brought it down savagely, again and again in their midst. Vox bursts rang with their death cries.

The Knight stamped the small copse of trees into a splinter-mist of wood and earth; loamy earth that sank beneath his piston driven onslaught. A figure in purple armour disappeared beneath the Knight's foot - then reappeared, clinging to a bundle of wires behind the Knight's armour plate, soft loam smeared across the bold colours of his power armour. The marine half dropped, half fell to the ground and retreated towards the devastators where, in testament to his psych-conditioning, he stopped, turned to face the Knight and stood his ground.

With a roar of insane litanies the Knight advanced on the Devastators; melta-fire burned into the Knight's chest plate as it loomed above the squad - reducing it to golden slag - seared through supporting skeletal struts, and ignited in the Knight's fusion drive. A small sun blazed for a fraction of a second deep inside the war-walker before it toppled, bisected, to left and right, screaming all the while. There was no cheer from the marines, no relief. The third Knight thundered towards them.

On the right flank the Hawk Lords tactical squad used the Librarian's sacrifice to advance, seeking to breach the second Knight's ion shield with their melta weapons. They drew up, insanely close, and began to unleash fire into its underside; flames lit and blazed behind it's armour. Still the Knight stood.

Shrieking in on golden wings, a Seraphim Stormraven dipped low on a scout plotted attack vector; las and melta fire battered the second Knight, a Stormstrike missile tearing away its chestplate. The Hawk Lords were brought a few precious seconds reprieve from the strike though, still, the Knight stood.

The Stormraven gunship tore across the battlefield. Targeting augurs zoned in on the approaching Arch-Magos and his attendants. The Stormraven's second barrage tore apart the ground around the cybernetic group, or sparked out on personal force-shields. A lumbering Kastelan Automaton spat a binaric incantation, faster than a man could think or see, and an incoming lasblast from the Stormraven's cannon turret rebounded back at the speeding gunship, tearing a hole through its tail. The juddering craft pulled up and away, limping over distant trees on a pall of smoke.

As the Devastators fell back in the face of the third Knight's onslaught; as the tactical squad fired over and again even as the second Knight began to stamp frenziedly down upon them; then Captain Auguste and his attack squad dropped from the skies and blazed bolt pistol fire into the Techpriests, Archeologues and servitors left to watch the excavation. Those that didn't fall to the close quarters gunfire died beneath lightning claw and chainsword.

And even as the gibbering Arch-Magos realised his error and sought to turn his retinue back, a squad of golden Sanguinary Guard, veterans of the Conclaves of Gnosis and Air, dropped down upon their flank and piled savagely into their midst.

The Arch-Magos screamed in fury; but too late. Captain Auguste had secured the excavation. Seraphim scouts charged in, melta bombs in hand, and recklessly blew the cold stone seal at the bottom of the archeotech pit into molten wreckage.

The scouts dropped in, followed by servitor skulls, vid lenses whirring in the darkness. A fraction of a second later it came, tearing down from the heavens in wreathes of blue flame. It shattered the site further where it struck, rippled the earth, and set Zarathustra's vox-channel abuzz with the screams of his scouts. They were extinguished almost as soon as they were issued.

With a thunderclap the blue flame burst forth from the wreckage of the archeotech site and sailed away to the west. In the shocked lull that followed only Auguste had the presence of mind to order the withdrawal. In the bright light of a new morning, cool air tinged by the pall of war, the marines melted away to their pre-arranged extraction sites.

Mournful binary bleats filled the airways, and then were silent.

Interlude I

Brother Gabriad, if you'd asked him, could not remember being ordered to probe the terrifying anomaly that had grasped this region of space; he could not remember his chapter for that matter, or his name. All that he held in his head was the Call that drew him forth. Those that answered it walked beside him. Those that did not were dispatched, brutally.

Those memories did linger, in their way. Cries of anger, and fear and pain. Blood on his hands, blood on his sword. Bodies wrenched apart with but a thought. The glow of satisfaction.

He was doing good work. Holy work. The Call was not to be heeded lightly. The hour was late, and enemies thronged on all sides. He must spirit his Master to sanctuary, lest he fall into the hands of the enemy. The stakes were not slight; the galaxy turned on the next few hours.

He remembered Angels, he thought, and Wolves. Blood and thunder. Death in the heavens. Twisted giants of muscle and fur wove about him and he felt at peace, for they heeded the Call also.

Then the Call came more urgently, for a time. The enemy had located his Master and clashed with another of the Master's servants. Gabriad tensed and listened and awaited his time.

It came as a scream of discovery amidst the fury of a careless explosion. The coiled spring of Gabriad's mind unravelled and he sailed an arcane sea of guttering blue flame, spurred by the Call.

A dust swirled chamber, then. Golden daemons, gawping at him with startled, bug-eyed faces. He burned them all.

Gabriad saw his Master, upon the stone dais where he had passed these aeons uncounted. He gathered his Master to his breast and uncoiled his mind once again, returning upon the blazing sea. It was not easy, and unnerving and beguiling tongues chittered in his ears. His Master kept him from them.

His Master would keep him from all.