Part 20 (1/2)

a”We see them,a” voxed Brother-Captain Corvane Valar.

a”Good hunting,a” replied Captain Thadea's voice in his internal helm speakers. a”Victory or Death.a”

a”Not today, Cadian. Today, it shall be both.a”

The Chimeras sat at the edge of the graveyard, lined up in neat rows along a wide avenue. The rain was heavy now, scything into soil that was quickly becoming thick mud. Thade led the column of men, leaving the graveyard through the towering marble archway theya'd entered by only hours before.

The squads spread around the tanks, rifles up. No one was there. The street was deserted.

a”No guards,a” said Darrick. a”Anyone get Valiant on the vox?a”

Thade had left fifteen men, Valiant squad, to watch over the thirty troop transports. The possibilities were uniformly unpleasant. Either Valiant had met its end too fast to vox for a.s.sistance, or any cries for help had been lost in the maelstrom of the broken vox network.

a”Ia've got blood over here,a” said Corrun, his laspistol drawn. Thade came over to him, his own pistol out and held low in both hands. Thadea's command Chimera, black where the others were a mix of black and grey, had a scarlet smear up one side.

a”No bodies.a” Thadea's skin p.r.i.c.kled.

a”Tick-tock,a” Darrick reminded him.

a”Perimeter sweep, and make it fast,a” Thade ordered. The squads checked the immediate area, finding nothing more than a few bloodstains on the ground.

a”I cana't reach Valiant,a” Janden admitted, slinging his patched-up vox-caster on his back. He came over to where Thade stood by the tracks of the command Chimera. a”Though this isna't exactly working at peak performance.a”

a”Ia've got them,a” a voice crackled over the vox. a”Throne, theya're in pieces.a”

Horlana's squad found the fifteen men of Valiant several hundred metres from the Chimeras, within a small enclosed street chapel made of inexpensive white stone that poorly imitated marble. A pilgrim trap, set up by fake relic traders, and now the tomb of almost twenty Guardsmen.

Valiant were indeed in pieces. Their bodies lay limbless and desecrated in a heaped pile, their armour and flesh alike showing evidence of blade wounds and las-fire.

a”Sir,a” Horlan was backing out of the chapel, voxing the captain. a”All dead. The Remnant did this.a”

a”d.a.m.n it,a” breathed Thade. a”Mount up, wea're leaving. The Raven Guard is engaging the XIV Legion. Astartes or not, therea's no guarantee they can buy us much time.a”

The Cadians boarded, and the ramps slammed closed as they made ready to move out. When the tanks rolled away, almost half of them remained behind, uncrewed and unmoving. Once they were underway, Thade joined Corrun in the front of the command Chimera.

a”You know the way to link up with Colonel Lockwood?a”

Corrun didna't take his eyes from the vision slit, watching the buildings speed past.

a”You know I do.a”

a”No harm in checking. Vox to the other drivers a- when we arrive, wea're going to disembark and be back on board within thirty seconds.a”

a”Thirty seconds? What about survivors?a”

Thade fixed him with a look that spoke volumes. a”Just vox it, Corrun. Thirty seconds. We deploy, we reclaim the banner, and we go.a”

Corrun complied, and the tanks trundled on. Through wide avenues and slender, winding streets; through abandoned barricades that had stood untouched since the planeta's Enforcers deserted them weeks before. All the while, the vox chattered with intermittent howls of static and indecipherable whispers.

a”Wea're getting close, sir,a” Corrun said, pulling into an expansive concourse. The transport started to jostle, treads clawing the tank over mounds of the slain. a”This was some battle a”

a”I want to see for myself,a” the captain said.

Thade climbed the short ladder to the cupola and pushed it open. He peered out of the hatch, pistol in hand, and activated his vox. The scene resembled a marketplace of detritus and abandoned tradersa' carts. As the tanks slowed, Thade emerged to stand on the Chimeraa's rain-slick roof, scanning the scene around. The bodies of slain Guardsmen were strewn across the marble-tiled ground, staining the mosaic patterns across the floor dark and unrecognisable with blood. The bodies of Remnant were spread in far greater numbers, punctuated here and there by the hulking form of a slain Traitor Astartes.

He took it in with a tacticiana's eye. There was little order here, hardly any signs of how the battle had ebbed and flowed. It had been fast. The 88th had been encircled from the outset and cut down in the ranks they formed to repel the a.s.sault. Thade knew the colonela's Sentinels would be out of sight, almost certainly destroyed as the enemy first came upon them before engaging the main force.

a”Thade to 88th,a” he said as his eyes sought every detail of the scene, drinking it all in. Faces he recognised, drawn in death, bodies and uniforms soaked in blood and the rain. a”Be ready to deploy, weapons hot, on my order. Venator squad will go for the prize. Everyone else, stand ready.a”

Corrun drove through the mess of dead soldiers, the Chimeraa's treads hissing as they splashed through the thin, orange fluid of rainwater and blood. There it was. The banner. Thadea's gaze fixed on the fallen banner atop a small mound of slaughtered soldiers, the fabric itself stained and soaked through.

A burned-out husk of a Chimera, as black as Thadea's own, sizzled in the rainfall. The nuance was not lost on Thade: it was a blunt premonition of things to come.

And the banner was on the ground only twenty metres from it. Ragged, ruined and filthy. It lay like a blanket across the body of the last man to carry it, its rain-darkened surface distorted by the lumps of the corpse it covered.

a”Corrun, kill the engine. Venator squad, deploy. The banner is by Colonel Lockwooda's transport, twenty steps north. Go.a”

The men spilled out.

a”Courage, Adamant, Defiance and Liberation,a” Thade named the squads he knew were suffering with low ammo. a”Deploy and scavenge for what you need.a”

The other squads deployed. Thade watched them taking magazines from the dead. His attention remained mostly on Kel and his Whites.h.i.+elds. They didna't balk at the duty. That was something, at least.

a”Can you see Lockwood?a” voxed Darrick.

a”Dona't ask,a” Thade replied. He recognised Lockwooda's corpse by the silver trim on the charred corpsea's shoulder armour. It was lying half out of the destroyed Chimeraa's turret hatch, a pistol and sword on the transporta's roof out of reach of its blackened, outstretched hands.

Thade moved to the edge of the roof and leaped down to the ground. His boots splashed filthy water in a spray as he landed.

a”Sir,a” crackled the vox to the percussion of clanking feet in the background.

a”Copy, Greer.a” Then he swallowed. Greer was dead; hea'd seen him die.

a”This is Vertain, sir.a”

a”My apologies. Interference and Thade here. Go.a”

a”Enemy sighted. Wea'll need to make this fast. Looks like plague-slain coming down the avenue to the west.a”

a”Numbers?a”

a”Hundreds. Wea've got a few minutes, theya're just shambling.a”

Thade ran over to the wrecked Chimera, near where his command squad were reverently lifting the banner, squeezing the water from the thick fabric and furling it for retrieval. He climbed the side ladder to the tanka's roof, kneeling to pick up Colonel Lockwooda's bolt pistol.

Lockwood watched him perform this indignity, rapt with an eyeless stare, blackened face locked in a wide-jawed and silent scream.

a”Need the clips, sir?a” Tasoll asked as he finished rolling the banner up. Thade didna't answer. He looted Lockwooda's burned corpse the way the other squads were looting their slain brethren, adding Lockwooda's unspent bolter magazines to his own dwindling supply. Using a spare holster from his webbing, he strapped the colonela's pistol to his other thigh.