Secret War: Upon Blood Sands

Chapter 39

'You did it, Karmen,' said Tathe turning to the psyker. She didn't respond but kept stepping; due to the servos of her power armour, Tathe was sure. A chill blasted through Tathe; he hoped he hadn't got her killed. He met the gaze of the nearby Vark and pointed to Karmen. Vark nodded and began to approach her. He took off her helmet with deft hands, and Tathe felt a shiver of shock through him as he saw the blood that coated her face from the nose down. Vark felt her pulse.

'She's alive, unconscious, but alive,' said the stormtrooper. 'I will call up a medic.'

Tathe nodded.

It was then the Greater Daemon of Khorne smashed amongst its servants with the force of a bomb. It hit the hill about fifty metres to the left of the Imperial advance, crushing countless Resurrected under its huge bulk; all they could do was cry out, being too packed in even to attempt to get out of the way. Then it rolled and crashed down the hill, throwing up what must've been tons of sand into the air in its wake. Its roars and bellows as it rolled and rolled were...surprisingly human; tathe could hear, pain, anger, but most of all, and most surprisingly...embarrassment or humiliation. Then, half a second later, its wings fell amidst the Resurrected, crushing even more.

Tathe's attention was torn from the fallen daemon by the familiar, throaty barking of a bolter to see a Space Marine of the Raven Guard standing amongst the Resurrected, his shots scything through them, exploding heads and torsos into red mist and chunks. Any Resurrected unfortunate to get close would be treated to the heel of the Space Marine's boot or the butt of his bolter. The Marine threw out a round kick which sent three Resurrected flying away completely broken, before decapitating another with a flick of his knife.

The Sovrithans, Dantian included, bellowed, 'KALAKOR! KALAKOR!' And exploded into fighting on with breathtaking fervour.

How had this Kalakor got down here? Had he somehow ridden the daemon down? That was the only explanation Tathe could think of.

Finally, the daemon came to a halt by smashing against the tower with such force the reinforced rockcrete cracked outward like an instantly built spider web. The Bloodthirsters hoofed feet were flung up almost comically. The daemon was far from dead, but Tathe had never seen such...a creature brought so low and so humiliatingly.

A thought struck Tathe, and he looked back to Kalakor and his slaughter. Had the Raven Guard used just that knife to cut through the daemon's wing? The knife may have been a short sword for a mortal, but for an Astartes, it was well...a knife.

Even with all his weight, strength and momentum from the fall that shouldn't have been possible, Attelus less so due to wielding a powersword, let alone a mastercrafted one-

The roar of engines drew Tathe's gaze upward and to the Guncutter as it hovered about fifty metres above.

'Air support is here,' said a melodic, arrogant voice over the voxlink. 'Allow me to lend some hands to your effort, commissar. Or shots, to be more accurate. A frig ton of them.' The deafening cacophony of heavy bolters and lascannons tore an incredible fusillade through the massed ranks of the Resurrected. Almost instantly tearing a huge, straight gouge toward the tower's entrance.

Tathe raised his sword and swiped it down. 'Advance!' he roared.

As the Imperials, now running high on morale, moved onward, Tathe caught a glimpse of the lone, grey parachute falling and weaving toward the Bloodthirster as it was snarling and snorting and writhing the remnants of its wings; it seemed to shake its gigantic head to regain its equilibrium, another strange human-like mannerism.

Attelus wasn't...He couldn't be...

Kalakor had also moved a fair way towards the daemon by then, slaying and slaying all in his way with inhuman ease.

'By the Golden frigging throne,' Tathe managed and pointed. 'Provide that insane little fool cover fire now, frig you!'

Attelus hoped the daemon's fall would be enough to restrict enemy attention away from him and his parachute.

And by the Emperor, it seemed to have worked; no las fire or anything flew his way. Not yet, anyway. Nonetheless, he still zigzagged down like sergeant Starkeren of Enandra's Stormtrooper corpse had taught him.

But in all honesty, this whole frigging insane scheme shouldn't have worked in the first place. He'd known the second it'd started how the Bloodthirster had stopped rising but had tried to ignore it. Not just that, but she hadn't just stalled its flight but, perhaps, even managed to pin back the daemon's limbs. He'd been callous towards it, but he couldn't afford to be; it was the corruption getting to him. It was the corruption making him take such insane risks. It was the corruption causing him to feel the rush of battle more than ever before. He needed, needed to regain control of himself.

Yet now here he was, about to fight a greater daemon, he'd regained control, but it was too late to back down now.

Attelus unclipped his harness about two metres off the ground and dropped. One Resurrected, a Sovrithian, looked up at the shadow growing over him just in time to take Attelus' feet in his face, his neck snapping with a crack which somehow overrode the chaotic cacophony of battle everywhere around.

The man was flung onto his back, and Attelus' power sword sliced twice to take the heads off two others. He hit the ground and ducked a cultist's whining chainsword a split second later. Attelus' diagonal slice went from the attacker's hip then out his shoulder.

Another cultist swung down a chain axe which Attelus sidestepped. Before the cultist's axe even hit the sand, Attelus' round-house kick smashed the Resurrected's ribs into splinters, and as the cultist was flung off his feet, Attelus turned his round-house kick into a side-kick into the cultist's face.

Attelus sliced through the chest of a Velrosian as she drew back her bayonet to stab, then reversed the cut to slash a Marangerian stomach open.

He fought the urge to laugh; he fought it far harder than he fought and killed the Resurrected coming for him. They seemed to be turning all their attention for him, as though the hive mind leading them knew he was the one who came up with the plan which laid their champion so low. Or for billions of other conjectures, Attelus didn't even want to start speculating on. That was good; the more pressure on him meant, perhaps, less on the Imperial advance But they couldn't bring their numbers to bear on him as Imperial covering fire swathed through them, mostly focused for enemy ranged fighters and Bloodletters. Attelus was just glad that Tathe had seen him, as he hoped he would. But even so, sooner rather than later, he'd be overwhelmed if something didn't happen. He briefly wondered if he'd become one of them if Faleaseen's owning of his soul would make him immune. He hoped so, as the Resurrected version of himself would slice a bloody, bloody swathe through his friends and allies.

Bolter fire turned at least a dozen of the Resurrected advancing on him into clouds of blood and bone chips.

In the next split-second, Kalakor was advancing by Attelus' side, firing his bolter from the hip. Attelus couldn't help hiss a curse beneath his breath: in his enthusiasm, he'd forgotten to grab some sort of automatic gun from the Guncutter, which would've proved invaluable now.

'Took you long enough,' said Attelus as he drew his autopistol and added his pitiful shots to Kalakor's.

Kalakor's reply was lost as the Bloodthirster's roar eclipsed every other sound, and it climbed to its hooves. Its hate-filled cylindrical eyes were plastered on Attelus and Kalakor; its snarling snout rippled, and blood-tinged saliva drooped from its yellow teeth.

The familiar ice hot tentacles of fear sprouted from Attelus' heart and throughout his entirety. Yet he welcomed it, embraced it like a lover her hadn't seen in an eternity. It'd seemed he hadn't realised its absence until now. Attelus knew fear more intimately than any other human he knew. He knew fear was one of the most important facets of being human. Perhaps it was his earlier moment of self-awareness that brought him back from the brink? Perhaps...perhaps it wasn't blind faith or even a severe level of willpower that was the anathema to corruption? But it was the wisdom of knowing oneself?

Despite the onrush of fear, Attelus stood his ground.

Then the Bloodthirster sent out its whip for Attelus and Kalakor, stretching the one hundred or so metres between it and them in a millisecond and slicing through the dozens of Resurrected in the way...