Against the Black Crusade...by Christopher Allen(Chaos prologue and epilogue by Scott Whitemyer) ***** Prologue: Chaos The Despoiler was tired of waiting. He gave orders to Brand the Slayer, champion of the Night Lords: "Form up your men and prepare for battle." A most unexpected gate from their own Chaos realms into the Imperium of Man had been opened; all they need do to seize it was destroy an insignificant cult of Loyalist space marines. The small chapter called themselves the Void Phantoms, and were lead by a cunning and powerful psyker, the Lord Liche. Brand gathered his clansmen in the dank shadows of the battle
barge. They were the Night Lords, the most ruthless hunters Chaos had ever known, and
their hatred for this Loyalist chapter burned so great he imagined he could smell burning
flesh. "I will make room for Liche's skull on my pike," shouted Tabun, of the
Warmaster's bodyguard of slayers. The Despoiler went alone deep into the bowels of
the barge, and entered a room wrapped in total darkness. The only light came from a pair
of eyes glaring at him from before a delapidated altar. "Thou hast found them, and
seeketh mine aid," whispered Ivar the Bodiless. "Very well. The ground will run
wet with the entrails of these Loyalists--and I shall keep this Liche as my altar boy. He
shall swear allegiance to Chaos before the moons of Bray pass again." Ivar the
Bodiless was pure psychic energy inside an ancient suit of power armour. The fire of Chaos
seeped out through the openings in his helm. He stayed in the bowels of the ship so that
he would have no contact with the Legions, at this war altar where he studied the ways of
countless enemy psykers. He had made his price for serving in this battle clear: in ready
rooms far above the Iron Warriors and the Black Legion made ***** Prologue: Loyalists The young Space Marine librarian had all three holoscreens in the antechamber activated, one transmitting visual data of the ongoing fleet-to-fleet battle above the planet, the second relaying disjointed images of the ground action scattered in increasingly chaotic fashion across its surface. The third screen displayed text only, green characters flickering across black too rapidly for normal senses to recognize, much less draw coherence from. But his was not a 'normal' mind--not in any sense. He was a Lexicanium rank librarian of the Emperor's Space Marine chapter the Void Phantoms. That meant that he was first of all things a space marine, wrought of millennia of genetic manipulation, superhuman of body AND of mind; moreover, he was a librarian, one of those rare space marines to manifest psychic ability, and rarer still be able to master that potentially maddening mutation and turn the power such mastery granted him to the service of the Imperium of Man. And lastly, he was a Lexicanium--a colater of data, a recorder of history for his chapter, just as the Codicier librarians ranked above him were the analyzers and codifiers of that data, and the Epistolaries the writers and teachers of it. And so his eyes watched the three screens at once--a part of him angry at such a critical time that he was being kept waiting in this anteroom, with access to only these three meager datafeeds, when something so monumental was transpiring around him--and so his fingers worked independently of each other as he sat, tapping the keys of a datapad with one hand, noting key phrases or vectors or references on an anointed vellum parchment with the other. Until the screens suddenly flickered, then went out with an electric hiss, and the recessed lighting of the chamber suddenly dimmed as though sucked dry of power; and the chamber's doors unbolted with a clangor that echoed away through the hull of the ancient battlebarge. And the master of the Void Phantoms cadre of psyker historians, the Chief Librarian Lord Liche, stepped through them. The younger librarian noted the ancient psyker wore his immense and ponderous battledress, the Tactical Dreadnought--or 'terminator'--Armour, in which a marine could virtually stand in the heart of a sun, and survive; he was armed with a freshly oiled and annointed stormbolter, and his Force Axe hung by its haft from the waist of his armour, presently dormant without a charge of the Chief LIbrarian's psychic energy to bring it to blazing coherence. The Lexicanium was glad enough of that; he was proficient with truesteel blades, but force weapons were another matter entirely, so much strength once charged that a single misswing could cost an imperfect wielder a limb, or worse--the Chief Librarian's master-crafted axe, most of all. The old librarian regarded him for a moment, and the Lexicanium tried not to look too directly into Liche's black and impenetrable eyes. There was too much of the Warp in there, the place/nonplace from which all psykers drew the energy for their powers. It was...disconcerting. "Lexicanium Cantor?," he asked finally, his voice like sand pouring from a fractured hourglass. The younger librarian nodded. "You will be coming." Cantor nodded, immediately began securing his datapad and scrolls. Liche stopped him with a slow wave. "You will bring your devices of recording. You will transcribe what comes to pass, this day. "It has come time for...a reckoning." Cantor narrowed his eyes at his elder. "You have divined some...purpose, in all of this?" The saturnine curves of Liche's brows knitted darkly. "I have...always known what this was about. It is only now that I've opportunity to act upon it. This...Black Crusade which has poured out of the Eye of Terror and engulfed Bray is the twisted culmination of our successful repulsions of the Tyranid Hive Fleet Triton. Together with our allies, we blunted their advance, then threw them back, then finally hunted them down across space, to the last monster. Whatever Consciousness controls such creatures took notice, and sent a new force to exact retribution. You will remember the terrible toll they took before a detachment of our brother marines the Cleansing Flames and I could...rescue the survivors. And...exact a vengeance of annihilation upon them." The Chief Librarian turned upon his junior angrily, though his cadaverous voice did not change. "The proof that the Tyranid Hive Mind is somehow behind these heretical 'Genestealer Cults' lay in what followed. And the groundwork for this madness which now threatens us all. One such 'cult' was given instructions for my...assassination. Even if it meant their exposure. At any cost." The Lexicanium's jaw dropped. He--a gatherer of data--knew none of this. "They were to take any measure to ensure my destruction. Even unto the hiring of an 'assassin squad.' Of Chaos Space Marines. Night Lords." The words hung in the overcharged air of the room. The blood between the loyalist Void Phantoms and the rebel Night Lords was very bad, the...feud, very old indeed. "The cult's attempt came to naught. They were destroyed without real threat to me. Their Chaos 'allies' turned upon them, in the end. And fled back to the Warp, eager to exploit the rift into our reality which the cult had so unwisely opened." "The rift through which the Despoiler has launched this newest Black Crusade," Cantor finished the thought, suddenly realizing. The old terminator nodded. "A rift which Fate has set me astride. *I* have brought into our reality all his starships, and all his troops which wage grim and relentless war upon this tortured planet's surface. To exploit the rift--to advance his Black Crusade beyond this beachhead--he who calls himself the Chosen of Chaos must destroy me." The ancient librarian exhaled heavily. "And in turn, to undo what I have done...I must face him, to close it." The Lexicanium weighed what his master was saying. "But
my lord, there are," he thumbed hastily through his handwritten scrolls, 'there are
fully elements of three legions of Chaos Space Marines on Bray--Iron Warriors and Black
Legion, as well as Night Lords. The Imperium musters against them whole regiments of
Cadian and Danikan Imperial Guard and the Second Company of the Cleansing Flames, squads
of Draco Legion and Hounds of Ulster, Inquisitors backed by Grey Knight and Ultramarine
detachments--" He shook his head, turning away from the Chief Librarian, talking to
himself. "This is war, on a The Chief Librarian stared impassively at the Lexicanium. "That is Fate." Lord Liche's voice steeled, and his armoured hands balled
into fists. "Gather your armour, and present yourself for battle in the gunship
hangar in less time than it will take me to walk there. "It is time for a recorder of
data to learn something of their ***** Battle Report: The Battle for Bray Beachhead The surface of Bray was a black, unstable, fiercely molten place in the best of times; rocked as it was currently by almost-planetwide war, it was become a seething cauldron of misery, volcanoes belching scarlet lava, skies flayed raw by the blast of artillery just over the horizon. The tiny command detachment of Void Phantoms had spotted their opposite number as they had deployed in their gunmetal grey ThunderHawk. They had dismounted under the screen of a low hill of razoredged obsidian rock; although their flyover had given them the advantage of first reconnaissance, it had not been subtle--and had given Chaos the chance to strike first. As the terminator-armoured Chief Librarian arrayed his meager forces behind a central volcanic cone, Cantor took note of what he could see, and did not like it: the Lord Liche had loaded two combat squads of tactical marines into one of the Chapter's venerable Land Raider assault tanks, then hustled Cantor into a smaller Razorback tank, and launched. The Void Phantoms' other resources, including their Captain the Revenant and the chapter's terminators, were scattered across the planet with other Imperial forces, already hardpressed. This was all he could gather to accompany him. As Chaos moved against them, Cantor could see it was not going to be enough. Two full squads of traitor space marine infantry were outflanking them to either side: Black Legion were moving between the dominant volcanic cones to their left, toward the shattered ruin of some ancient, failed civilization, cursed to extinction by this hellish rock; and Iron Warriors were coming at them over the hill to their right. In the center, something...malefic approached. Cantor knew less about the forces of Chaos than he would have liked; knowing too much of such things invited doom--or the Inquisition, which was very much the same, he thought. But if what whispers he'd heard were true, then what was coming at them from the center of the Chaos line was not the tank it appeared to be; it was--something more, a living, breathing, seething thing encased in the empty metal shape which had once been a Predator tank, but which now seemed to advance on them in a corruscating shield of smoke and flame angrily...hungrily. The young psyker felt his steadiness falter, and looked around him to see his brother space marines felt it, too--they were outnumbered and outgunned, already outflanked to both sides and no Night Lords yet to see which meant they were hidden, somewhere, anywhere nearby, perhaps already behind them, with a daemonic presence in the shape of an engine of war bearing down upon them as if to feast and a manshape visible behind it directing its movement that HAD to be a tainted traitor psyker, one as powerful as Liche was to control such a creature--and the hellish object of this insane quest was not even to be seen on the field of battle yet, the Despoiler could be anywhere--this was madness, hot red hellish molten madness and they were all, all alone--! The thundering of artillery in the distance, and of the vulcanism all around them, was so loud almost no one heard the new sound until it was directly over them, and their terror becoming so palpable a thing almost none recognized it even then--until the shriek of the incoming Drop Pod's deploying airbrakes made ignoring it impossible. The circular pod plummeted planetward, glowing redly, blossoming at the last moment to brake its reckless descent--then it geysered into the corner of the charred ruins at the Void Phantoms' left flank; and before the blistering steam of its impact had begun to dissipate, there were great, hulking figures clambering out of the pod, unlimbering weapons, moving efficiently into cover. Not many of them, true--but their effect was enormous: Against all odds, the Space Wolves had arrived. Liche caught the young Lexicanium's mind, then, very briefly--but it felt to Cantor like he'd been whipsawed. The Chief Librarian did not take time even to convey words--but the message was clear, and absolute: No Fear. No Fear. No Fear. Cantor inhaled deeply, nodding to himself; then he turned to look upon the Daemon Tank rumbling toward them still, almost directly opposite them on the far side of the central volcano. It was still as terrifying as it had been--and Cantor knew it *was* alive, and it was accustomed to shredding the minds of lesser men with just its presence. But it had reckoned without the strength of mind of the Void Phantoms, and of their Chief Librarian. Cantor nodded, steadied. And in truth, thought the young psyker with the wry hint of a smile, if Liche were mage enough to conjure Space Wolves out of thin air, perhaps the young Lexicanium were wiser to fear Librarian than Daemon.... "Hail, Jarl Liche," crackled a booming voice across the Phantoms' comnet. "You will not be begrudging the huscarls of the Seventh Great Company a part of the glory, eh?" Cantor detected something like amusement in the Chief Psyker's reply. "Hail, Jarl Bashar. The Emperor forfend I should be so unwise as ever stand between Space Wolves and an opportunity for mayhem...." The Lexicanium noted the deploying Space Wolf force almost clinically--which was, after all, his job. Five terminators moved into cover of the ruins, deploying around their Wolf Lord Bashar like a bodyguard--that marked them as Wolf Guard veterans--while an enormous shape moved out of the steam of their crash toward the Phantoms' position, behind the venting cone of the central volcano. Cantor translated the markings on the great sarcophagus, a trophylike head of a beast of Chaos, a minotaur, mounted on its top--and recognized the great dreadnought Magnus, using the maelstrom of their landing to advance with his Iron Priest tender into a crossfire position for any enemy which chose to advance in turn on the other Wolves. Liche's voice rasped across the comnet again. "There is a whole planet engulfed in battle, old friend," he asked Bashar almost casually, as he directed the firelanes of his tanks. "Why here, now?" The Wolf Lord's laughter boomed through Cantor's helmet, deafening even over the distant artillery. "Because experience has taught me where the runelord Undying commits to battle, there will the fighting count most!" Cantor considered whom they'd come here seeking, still nowhere yet on the battlefield as the forces closed to engagement range, and wondered whether the Wolf Lord knew how truly, this time, he spoke.... Then he saw the bone-armoured squads of Undying around him begin to hunker down into cover, and realized there was no more time for wondering. The flanking traitor marine squads moved with precision into cover, and from each a rebel missile launcher opened the shooting with a plasma salvo. The Iron Warriors' to their right caromed off the turret plate of the Phantoms' Razorback and exploded behind them into a seething pillar of white hot plasma, too brilliant to look upon. The Black Legion missileer was more ambitious: realizing his squad's position on an obsidian rise gave him line-of-sight into the deployed Wolf Guard's cover, he glanced quickly to his Captain, Sarin, who nodded his assent--and launched his plasma missile into their midst! There was a moment of fierce activity as the plasmastorm ignited around the Wolf Guard, blasting them backward, some of them completely clear of their cover, then shot skyward like a miniature sun to match the one bracketting the Loyalists' other flank--but when the unit of Wolf Guard and their lord regained their footing, their terminator armour had done its job, and held. Liche's eyes caught the young Lexicanium's across the battlefield. "The plasma pillars hem us in intentionally. Mark my words: the traitor psyker has mastered the discipline Assail, and means to use it to hurl us into those plasma storms with his mind." The Chief Librarian narrowed his eyes. "Or into the magma. We must be cautious." His parchment voice almost snarled over the comnet. "And he must be dealt with." His voice was cut off by the sudden concussive report of autocannon fire. The Daemon Engine! Cantor looked to Liche immediately, knowing he was the target of this Chaotic Witch Hunt upon which all hinged--but incredibly, it was not the Chief Librarian of The Undying whom the hell tank had engaged, but Bashar, Wolf Lord, on the far flank! When the Space Wolf commander had been thrown clear of his cover by the plasma fusillade, he'd become too tempting a target for the daemon-possessed Predator, and it had wheeled on its tracks at speed away from the Phantoms' position on one side of the central volcano and accelerated toward Bashar, belching shells from its main gun as it closed range! The Wolf Lord turned into the fire as he was bracketted, and raised his Storm Shield as the final rounds of the volley found their range! Once, twice, three times in succession the explosive shells detonated against the flaring energy field produced by his Storm Shield--and thrice did the field hold! Two last rounds from the Predator's main gun struck home, either enough to slay the great warrior if his armour were breached. And twice more did the ancient terminator armour hold against the terrible concussive force, driving Bashar nearly to his knees, before dissipating the explosions harmlessly away. The smoke of the bombardment cleared; and to the amazement of the young librarian, Bashar of the Space Wolves still stood. "Cantor!" The Lexicanium's head snapped around at his master's voice--and the fury of fire around them seemed to still, for a moment, the movements of the battle to slow and the colours around them fade--and Lexicanium Cantor realized he was being drawn elsewhere, above the battlefield, away from reality as most recognized it. And closer to the Unreality known as the Warp. His master Liche was there, his psychic presence like a beam of pure, purplish force. And another was there, as well, a choatic bonfire presence every bit as powerful, in its way. Cantor felt dwarfed to insignificance as the two manifestations of each psyker lord reached for each other. The Chaos psyker, whoever he was, had found Lord Liche first, and launched a preemptive Psychic Duel. "Long have I sought thee, Servant of the Corpse," the traitor psyker hissed sibilantly. "My hatred of thee hath survived e'en the passing of my Real form. I am Ivar the Bodiless, now, thing of Warpstuff--and the chief instrument with which the Despoiler shall excise thee!" Chaos flame engulfed purple force, picking over and through it in an attempt to rend and flay. Then the force brightened, brightened, filling Unreality with its brilliance, causing the chaos flame to break down, and fall to pieces. Horrible pain jabbed through Cantor's mind, briefly, excruciatingly; then he was back on the battlefield, sounds of bolterfire deafening all around him. And in Lord Liche's hand his master-crafted force axe flared brilliantly to life, its blade of pure energy taking coherence at a thought--and flaring the blinding purple-white Cantor had seen in the Warp. "Ivar's duel," he whispered breathily, steadying himself as he turned to Liche. "He attempted to rip a discipline from your mind! Did--did his gambit succeed?" Liche turned to Cantor, fist tightening about the haft of his axe; his eyes whirled and seethed with the power of the Warp, and for an instant Cantor saw the furnace within them burning something away to ash. The Chief Librarian of The Undying snarled. "Ivar the Bodiless will not be casting 'Hellfire' this day," he whispered with finality. The psyker raised his arm. "Now--it is my turn." Cantor knew what was coming: the fell psyker turned his will upon himself, mustering the Iron Arm discipline. Across the battlefield, Ivar the Bodiless tried to gather himself to Nullify it--and Liche blew through the attempt like a whirlwind shredding tissue paper. The discipline took hold of him, and Liche, seething with energy, almost smiled at his apprentice. It was a terrible, chilling thing to behold. "The Despoiler has cast his opening gambit--and erred thrice, in the doing. First, he sends lackeys to do what Fate has tasked for him; second, he trusts a daemon--and before the battle is even engaged, it has lost its focus, and turned to attack the wrong foe; and last--it has been so hasty in the doing," His smile broadened ferally, "it has run too fast, too far, for the sorceror it was to protect to keep up." The psyker turned to the Phantom Land Raider. "Range?" he shouted. "Two-thirty meters," the sponson gunner replied. "Target?" "Acquired, my lord." "Guns free. Fire at will." "Discretion to fire acknowledged. Guns hot. Fire away." The twilight of the battlefield brightened as if lightning-struck as the two huge linked lascannons from the Raider's right weapons-mount fired at full charge. Ivar the Bodiless, Master Psyker of Chaos Undivided, still reeling from his consecutive defeats on the plane of thought, where he had always reigned without peer, had the blink of an eye to realize his daemon tank, in turning to race toward Bashar, had uncovered him, by the slightest of margins. Then the lascannon bolts hit him with enough force to have vapourized six times his number. His protective enchantments flared mightily, futilely, his Chaos-blessed armour fusing as it was completely overwhelmed. That quickly, Ivar the Bodiless, master sorceror, disappeared from the battlefield. And the psychic highground belonged completely to the Loyalists. Bashar the Space Wolf knew a momentum swing when he saw it. "Advance!" he howled, raising his thunderhammer Maul of Russ. Raising their voices in a terrible ululation, his Wolf Guard turned their weapons on the Black Legion in the hills. Storm bolters began the volley, barking at the Chaos marines--then were overwhelmed as the two heavy weapons Wolves unleashed the thundering fury of their assault cannon. The very hillside began to disappear under the carnage, until a lance of coherent light stabbed at the Wolf Guard from a hidden position beneath an overhang on the side of the central volcano, as an infiltrated squad of Chaos marine veterans struck from the Space Wolves' flank. The stricken wolf brother was lased out of existence in an eyeblink. The Undying took note of the infiltrators immediately, and to a man. The Night Lords had revealed themselves, at last.... Before any of them could act, however, the basso thrum of the great Ancestor's voice rolled across the battlefield like an orbital barrage. "Look to your flank," Magnus the dreadnought rumbled from the speakers set into his sarcophagus. "I will see to these traitors." Liche nodded, and his marines did as they were ordered--efficiently, if reluctantly. Boltguns sang in rapid-fire, joined by the heavy bolters of the Land Raider, and the lascannon from the turret of the Razorback, and Iron Warriors fell like wheat before the scythe--three of them gunned down, the fourth vapourized. Grimly they came on, unphased. Magnus the dreadnought energized his assault cannon, several times the size his terminator-armoured brethren carried. Steam vented from it as it spooled up, whining--then he turned it on the Night Lords, the steam turned to smoke from its eight gatling barrels, and a terrible storm of jacketed metal engulfed the hiding place of the Chaos marines, flaying rock and stone and armour and flesh alike, the keening of the whirling cannon joined by the terrible voice of the Ancestor, his howl of vengeance distorted by his sarcophagus' speakers into something of inhuman, sanity-threatening volume. Four veteran Night Lords were ripped apart--including the lascannoner who had slain his wolf brother. The Ancestor had his revenge. Liche grabbed the chestplate of his sergeant, gesturing at the enemy still advancing on their right. "They are the Iron Warriors--the masters of the Seige. Casualties will mean nothing to them," he snarled. "See this flank holds." "But Lord, where are you--?" Liche raised a saturnine eyebrow. "Redemption." The Chief Librarian moved himself across the battlefield with a thought, traversing the Unreality of the Warp to move into the maelstrom of the battle. His teleport brought him past Magnus, and around the central volcano, to the last Night Lord standing. He jabbed an armoured finger at the daemon tank rumbling past him. "But first, you must be dealt with." Waves of psychic force shuddered from his outstretched hand, bathing the area around the possessed Predator in entropy. "I curse you, and the machine spirit you enslave." Malevolent laughter echoed from somewhere within the empty, hollow tank. The gargoyled icons with which it had been ornamented suddenly sprang to life, hissing and steaming, gouts of sorcerous and malefic energy wreathing the daemon tank in protective, corruscating warp flame. Pure Chaos balefire assaulted the Void Phantom psyker, seeking not just to protect the daemon from his Machine Curse, but to drive the power from his mind entirely. For the second time in the battle, Chaos drew itself up and challenged the might of Lord Liche. For the second time, it failed. Liche drove the power against the daemon home, waves of force rolling out as he gestured--and the smoking gargoyles on the Predator began bursting like hammered ceramics. The aura dissipated in sickly green smoke--and the great daemon engine shuddered to a halt, cursed, its guns silent, its treads stilled, the evil warp entity within suddenly trapped in a machine which could not move. The Chief Librarian of The Undying turned to the remaining Night Lord at his knee. "You have chosen the wrong side. While you live, you can undo that mistake, still." He turned, and the gauntletted hand he had but a moment before used to crush a daemon, he extended to the traitor space marine. "Instead of death--choose redemption." The Black Legion had seen enough. Before they'd crested this rise, they'd seen Ivar the Bodiless vapourized a dozen feet from them, the Night Lords flensed from the battlefield like chaff, their tank support brought to its knees by the Loyalist psyker they were promised would be a chained slave before the day was out--and now bloody damned Space Wolves in terminator armour were disintegrating the very rise beneath their feet with assault cannon fire. One fell, another--by the time the third of their brethren went down, the entire squad had turned, and was backing away for the cover of the next obsidian ridge, the curses of their Captain Sarin falling deafly on their backs. "It is over!," one of the sons of Horus shouted back at him as he ran. "Not yet," Sarin shrilled at him, pointing. "The Loyalist psyker dies now! The Despoiler comes at last! "All our misfortune is about to be undone! The Chosen transports himself amongst us! Look--Abaddon comes!" They all looked, then. They could not fail to miss it: the sudden electricity in the air, the rush of displaced atmosphere as his orbiting battlebarge engaged its teleporters--and spat Abaddon the Despoiler and his bodyguard of slayers to the surface in a boiling electric explosion. And at the virtual center of the conflict, the Chief Librarian of The Undying closed a circuit on a device hung from the belt of his tactical dreadnought armour, in anticipation of this precise moment in the battle--and jammed the Chosen of Chaos midbeam. Servos, motors, devices of every sort across the battleground caught in the teleport jammer's field suddenly began shorting, spitting arcs of electric fire. The jammer itself became almost instantly white-hot to the touch, as its field-effect overloaded against the massive teleport drivers aboard the orbitting battleship; and for the briefest instant, Abaddon the Despoiler, Chosen of Chaos, and his terminator bodyguard were visible in silhouette above the battlefield, arcs of electricity limning their forms. Then the signal lost coherence, overcome by the jammer, and deviated madly out of sight across the roiling surface of the planet; and the teeth-jarring effect of the incoming teleport signal ceased as Abaddon and his slayers vanished back up to their ship, their already late appearance on the field of battle aborted again until their teleport drivers could recharge. Captain Sarin of the Black Legion had bulwarked his attempt to rally his squad on his Chaos Lord's appearance; when Abaddon's teleport attempt deviated into failure, his gamble failed utterly. Completely broken, the craven remains of the Black Legion ran from the battlefield. Unable to muster the courage to stand alone, Sarin swallowed hard, and followed them. The other Chaos space marines were harder men. Although the failure of their lord to arrive almost certainly sealed their doom--and they knew it--the Iron Warriors came on into the teeth of the Void Phantoms' bolterfire and armour. Their missileer targetted the Land Raider and fired true--but his plasma ammunition lacked the strength to penetrate the tank's armour. And the lone Night Lord stared defiantly into the black eyes of Lord Liche. "The Imperial corpse you worship would burn you as a heretic for your offer, mutant." Liche remained impassive, one arm outstretched. "Nevertheless, I must try." The Night Lord propped one arm across his knee, leaning forward as if to stand, as if to accept the proffered hand. "We know who you are," he whispered to the psyker as he rose. "And here is my answer!" With his other hand, the Chaos veteran energized a krak grenade and tossed it into the face of the Imperial psyker. The whoosh of implosion like a sonic boom which gave the grenades their name was deafening at such close range. When his nerves unjangled, the Night Lord looked up hopefully--and saw a terrible scar rent across the black-and-purple shoulder pad of the librarian's terminator armour, its 'flying skull' chapter emblem nearly obliterated. The arm he'd extended. Scarred--but not penetrated. With terrible precision, the Chief Librarian of The Undying raised his thrumming force axe with his other arm. The darkness of the Warp swirled in his ancient eyes. He smiled blackly. "Wrong choice." Leaving the daemon tank helpless in the throes of his seething Machine Curse, Lord Liche advanced on the Night Lord. Behind him, the two Wolf Guard and ancient Magnus caught the immobilized tank in a terrible and final crucifix of assault cannon fire. Impossibly it held together, a tremulous moan building low within it as round after round exploded into and through the metal shell--then finally it was too much, as the warp beast inside gave up possession of the unfortunate Predator, and fled screaming into the Warp as the tank literally flipped into the air, unspent cannon rounds cooking off like fireworks as it crashed to the earth on its side, destroyed. "Konrad Curze damn you!," the Night Lord howled and threw himself into hand-to-hand combat with Lord Liche, his chainsword whirling. Liche caught the chainsword with his force axe, its carbide teeth chattering and splintering away against the axe's adamantine haft, and brought his other hand around in a thundrous roundhouse punch that shattered away a piece of the traitor marine's helmet. His eyes met the Night Lord's. "It is not we who've embraced damnation," he whispered in his deathrattle voice. Then he guillotined the traitor marine in a stroke. The armoured body dropped headless at Lord Liche's feet. "And his name is 'Night Haunter,' to you." Cantor the Lexicanium watched as Bashar moved up carefully behind the Chief Librarian. "Options?," he shouted. Liche shook himself visibly, looked around a moment, assessing. "Consolidate," he told the Wolf Lord a moment later. "He is beaten, but Abaddon may not know it, yet. And the thing he wants, he may still try for." He glanced at the firefight still raging between Void Phantoms and Iron Warriors. "Meantime, I've had about a stomachful of that plasma missiller...," he growled, an instant before warping himself across the battlefield. Bashar caught Cantor's eye, and shook a finger at him as he set about retrenching his marines into cover. "He's got the taste of blood, now. Stay out of his way." The Lexicanium did not know what to say, and so chose silence. Instead he turned to watch the psyker lord appear suddenly from the Warp above and behind the Iron Warriors missile launcher marine. The combat was mercifully brief. Then there was that sensation again, like a building electrical storm, in the skies above the battlefield, and the instantaneous pressure of displaced space. Cantor glanced at Lord Liche as he stood above the Iron Warrior's corpse, but the psyker shook his head. Abaddon was coming, at last, this time beyond range of the Librarian's teleport jammer. Abaddon the Despoiler and his bodyguard of slayers arrived on the battlefield in a thunderclap, stray lightning crackling out from them and across the now- bloody obsidian surface of Bray. Abaddon the Arch-Fiend. Abaddon the Warmaster of Chaos. The Despoiler and his four terminator-armoured bodyguards deviated only slightly as they displaced this second time, landing behind the cover of the ancient ruins on the battle's left flank. The ruins in which the Space Wolf lord Bashar and *his* remaining four Wolf Guard terminators had only just redeployed. The two forces were virtual mirror images of each other--Bashar armed for close combat with Thunder Hammer and Storm Shield, two assault cannons to his bodyguard, the Despoiler wielding the demonsword Drach'nyen and theterrible Talon of Horus, reaper autocannon and heavy flamer in the hands of his bodyguard. The slayers had an instant's initiative, and used it, the Chaos terminator with the heavy flamer realizing he had 'ported in looking down the throat of both Wolf Guard assault cannons and reacting instantly, opening his weapon's valve wide and throwing jellied fire in a great searing gout across the two Space Wolves. Brand the Slayer, at Abaddon's side, stepped through a break in the crumbling walls and joined his battlebrother in throwing flame across the Space Wolves, the jet from his combiweapon scorching across the chest of another Wolf Guard and engulfing Bashar. The ancient ruins were thrown into a sudden and lurid conflagration, as all four Space Wolves caught fire--and one of the brothers with an assault cannon succumbed as his armour failed, dying an agonizing death. The last slayer with a line-of-sight from their teleport deployment was the bearer of the wicked reaper autocannon, and he swung its obscene barrels about to face the remaining assault cannon Wolf. It crashed into part of a ruined wall, almost invisible in the sudden billows of black smoke, just as the slayer triggered it--and the Chaos terminator roared with rage as both barrels of his reaper jammed! The Wolf brother with the assault cannon took a step forward, still aflame from his waist up, and snarled at the Chaos reaper. "Never trust obsolete technology." He depressed his trigger, and the Chaos reaper disappeared in a firestorm of cannon shells. The Wolf Guard were rallying now, and brought their stormbolters to bear against the Chaos bodyguard as they advanced. Brand came under fire, but it never reached his rune-encrusted armor, as his displacer field reacted to the kinetic energy of the boltershells and shifted hi safely aside. The slayer with the heavy flamer was not so fortunate: he had landed closest to the Wolf Guard, and when they reacted, he had nowhere to hide. An explosive round penetrated his ancient terminator armour, proving even so hard a steel skin was not invulnerable, and shredded the softer human tissue within. And with his champion Brand suddenly displaced to one side, and his flamer bodyguard fallen, Abaddon the Despoiler stood suddenly exposed to the assault cannon of the great Ancestor, dreadnought Magnus. His gun whirled and screamed at his thought, and Magnus poured cannonfire into the body of the Chosen of Chaos until his barrels began to redden; and through the smoke of the assault cannon volley, and the smoke from the burning terminators, it appeared for a moment that the Space Wolves had won the day before it were begun, and put the Arch-Fiend of Chaos down. Then they heard the terrible laughter, echoing across the battlefield, and the metal-on-metal scraping of the Talon of Horus as the clawed fingers worked against each other; and the smoke cleared, revealing Abaddon the Despoiler had taken the full measure of the dreadnought's fusillade with his cursed Chaos armour, and had not been scratched. Lesser men would have run in terror of such a sight. The manner in which he raised the grotesque Talon high suggested that was what Abaddon expected--fear, and obedience, and abasement. He got none of them from the Wolves, who engaged the clutches of their chainfists, adding that terrible keening to the aural horrors already assaulting Bray, and advanced with their Wolf Lord to settle with the Warmaster of Chaos in hand-to-hand combat. It might well have been a legendary thing to see: Abaddon the Despoiler, Brand his Champion, Tabun his slayer, come to blows against Bashar and his three remaining Wolf Guard. Skalds might have sung of it for the ages, whatever the outcome. It might have been glorious. But The Undying were notorious for the doggedness of their focus. However much the poets among them might have wished to see such a clash--however much the historian Cantor, watching, longed to be the one to record it--they remembered, to a man, the mission they had come to this specific place, at this appointed time, to accomplish. And so came the master psyker, teleporting himself across the battlefield. And so came the sergeant and his squads at a charge, trusting the Land Raider to protect their flank, and finish off the last of the relentless Iron Warriors, shrugging off their desperately hurled krak grenades as it slew them to the last traitor marine. And so came the Razorback, swinging around the volcanic cone which had dominated the center of the battlefield, its turret traversing as it unmasked, seeking a target. And finding, unscreened by his remaining bodyguards, unobscured by the drifting firesmoke, unprotected by so much as a charred brick of cover, on his flank--the Despoiler of Worlds. "Gun, target!," the driver shouted, almost not believing his eyes. He fought to hold the track steady on the rocky surface. "Target, aye," the gunner said more steadily, checking his turret targeter against the sight picture presented by his mark-one eyeball. He glanced back up as Wolf Guard advanced on the Chaos Warmaster from his left, and the Chief Librarian himself materialized out of wherever the hell psykers went when they teleported, hard on the right of his firing lane. He thumbed the twin plasma guns that were slaved to the targeter to 'Inactive;' this would have to be a precision shot. He whispered a prayer to the machine spirit of his long-barrelled lascannon, then energized. "Fire away!" A red-white lance of coherent light sheared through the battle-twilight, sighted true between Wolf-clogged ruins and the master psyker's left shoulder pad, and set Abaddon ablaze with laserfire. The first syllable of some mocking threat formed on the Chaos Lord's lips as light flooded him, the invulnerability of his armour, of his own Chaos-marked invincibility, an incontrovertible certainty in his mind. His death by lascannon fire was so microinstantaneous, Abaddon never had the opportunity to realize...he was wrong. The suddenness of his demise, the finality of it, momentarily stunned those closest to it. Cantor stared open-mouthed as the Chosen of Chaos collapsed to the jagged black ground of Bray, great smoking rents in his chest and torso, where his Chaos armour had failed. Even the Wolf Guard hesitated--and Brand and Tabun, literally the last two Chaos warriors left standing, looked as though they'd been poleaxed. It was as complete and stunning a Loyalist victory as could have been dreamt possible. Which was--understandably, in retrospect--totally unacceptable to the Great Powers of Chaos. Lord Liche recovered the most quickly, and moved to the attack against Brand, before the Chaos marine could gather himself; whether it was the daemon he had banished earlier with his Machine Curse, striking at its final opportunity for a measure of revenge, or some other malevolence entirely, sent by those Powers Unnameable not ready to surrender a Champion in which they'd invested so much--even the Chief Librarian could not say, after. Whatever the source, when he willed himself through the warp and into hand-to-hand combat with Brand, there was a warp beast waiting for him. Liche's teleport was Nullified, andthe master psyker of The Undying subjected to a daemonic attack. Cantor recoiled in horror; the daemon was barely coherent on the plane of the Real, but on the psychic plane it was like a thing of nightmare, shrieking and slashing at its target and jibbering like a madthing. It would have shredded him to pieces, the Lexicanium knew at an instant--but Liche had been battling such things for centuries beyond ready count, and the force of his will was far more than this daemon was capable of dealing with. By the time the master psyker of The Undying had banished his daemonic attacker, however--Brand the Slayer had taken advantage of the provided distraction in the only way he could. The Lexicanium could see on the Night Lord champion's face how it galled him to run, even in the face of impossible odds. But if this Black Crusade was failed, Brand realized as much as did the Loyalists that there could be another raised from within the timeless reaches of the Eye of Terror--if there were an Abaddon to lead it. The champion of the Night Lords moved before any of the other Loyalists could reach him, hefting fallen Abaddon with one enormous arm and grabbing Tabun by the chestplate with the other. His eyes met the Space Wolves, and their dreadnought, the Undying marines charging too late to encircle him--and their accursed psyker leader, whose 'humbling' this had all been about. 'Kill him, and the path to the Imperium lies open,' their seers had prophesied. 'I shall enslave him for my folly,' the Bodiless had boasted. 'He WILL die, THIS day, at MY hand,' Abaddon had told them all. Some part of him wanted to spit a curse at the Loyalists, a threat of vengeance, of retribution. But no words came to him. Only the dry and ashen taste of defeat. So he triggered the teleport retriever without a word, and the two remaining warriors of Chaos fled to their battlebarge with the smoldering corpse of their general. ***** Epilogue: Chaos The Black Crusade had failed miserably. They had not expected such heavy weapons from the Phantoms--nor any Wolf Guard terminators! Brand swore as he carried the corpse into the dark daemon chamber--there for the daemons of Chaos to restore Abaddon's essence. Daemons came out of the darkness and howled, and Brand left his master, trusting the Lords of Chaos to resurrect their favourite son.... As he returned alone through the battlebarge, purpose returned to his stride as he approached the Great Hall. Perhaps there was something he could add, to help. There would be no trial by combat as was custom. It was clear Sarin was guilty. A Chaplain moved among the gathered legions, the Word Bearer, Artaq. "The craven cowardice of Captain Sarin has put a mark of disgrace not only on his Black Legion, but on all Chaos Undivided. Chaos Legions are battlehardened warriors, who stand to the last. This...coward's name shall be stricken from all records, and shall not be spoken again, from this day forward." Artaq stepped down from the platform, as Brand ascended. A roar erupted: each warrior knew the Chosen had fallen, and it was Brand the Slayer who recovered the remains. He still wore his blood-covered armour from the defeat. A silence fell across the great hall, as all awaited Brand's sentence. "Flesh Hooks," he shouted. The barge echoed with cheers. Sarin hung from the hooks, screaming, for three days. Brand was certain his screams quickened the essence ofAbaddon.... ***** Epilogue: Loyalists Cantor squeezed his eyes closed tightly, knowing the act would cause him to miss whole streams of data across the holoscreens...but praying silently to the Emperor that the doing of it would restore to him enough concentration to focus, when he opened them. He was exhausted. For a space marine to reach such a state was almost unheard of--but so much had been set in motion, the moment Abaddon had fallen on the surface of Bray; and as the chief eyewitness, he had taken transcribing the defeat of this Black Crusade as his personal Ordeal. He paused. He was doing more than 'transcribing,' he realized. The events he'd borne witness to had become to him more than abstract and collected data. They told a story, he realized. They had consequences--as the sudden retreat across the surface of Bray by the Chaos forces, their almost haphazard fallback into the Eye of Terror, certainly testified. The data had taken on meaning, Cantor realized suddenly. And he was become the teller of their tale. The Chief Librarian had been right.... He glanced at his chronicle, cocking an analytical eyebrow. Certainly, there were still *facts* in question--the data streamed across screens all around him. But was the story there? Was what it all *meant*, there? Cantor scanned the concluding paragraphs he'd penned, and considered, for a long, quiet moment. Then a thought occurred to him, one which pleased him greatly; hastily, he took his pen from its inkwell and scribed a final line across the parchment: "Veritas. Dignitas. Fidelitas." The Oath of the Void Phantoms Chapter of Space Marines. That was the story these data were telling. "Truth. Honour. Loyalty." The Loyalty of soldier to what he believed in, against all odds; of battlebrother to battlebrother, even in the face of peril. The Honour of a chapter to its ideals, even under fire; of a man, even when mocked. And Truth? Perhaps that was why he'd been brought along, thought Cantor. After the debt to Loyalty and Honour were paid, in sweat, and blood--to tell the Truth. He ran a thumb along the gilt pages of his chronicle. The Truth of the Battle of the Bray Beachhead was there. Heretical thoughts, he wondered abstractly, for an historian? He rested his quill in its inkpot, and gently closed his chronicle beneath its leather cover. They were not, he decided. He smiled. The Truth never was. He stood, and idled the banks of screens to dormancy, and dimmed the chamber into darkness. THE END
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