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Dawn of War III – Extract

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

Chapter One

Varlock Keep shook with the thunder and fury of war. From the outer las barbicans to the central flak spires, it seemed the sheer presence of the greenskin horde would tear the ancient fortress apart. The hot air vibrated with the bellowing of countless alien throats, the hammering of iron-shod boots and the roar of heavy weaponry. Even sealed inside her blessed armour and linked to its Throne Mechanicum, Lady Rebek Solaria of House Varlock, Master of the Knight World of Cyprus Ultima, felt the orks’ animalistic ferocity like a physical force in the air around her. The auspex readouts weren’t able to compute the number of contacts in the immediate vicinity of the Westport Gate.

‘It won’t hold much longer,’ Kalyn, Solaria’s firstborn heir, said over the vox. ‘I’m moving to support you and father.’

‘You’ll do no such thing,’ Solaria snapped, checking the position of her son’s Knight suit on the uplink display. He was on the walls, while she held position in the courtyard behind the looming gateway. ‘You’ll hold that bastion for as long as I tell you, understood?’

‘Do as your mother says,’ Audemar, Lord Solaris, cut in over the vox. ‘She has faced down worse foes than this.’

It was a lie and they both knew it, but it was enough to silence Kalyn. Solaria noted that the rune representing the boy’s Knight was holding position. She opened a private link to Audemar.

‘If we lose the Westport you must get Kalyn to the inner bastion. God-Emperor willing it will hold them long enough for reinforcements to arrive.’

‘I won’t leave you,’ Audemar replied, voice chopped and distorted by the sounds of combat. ‘If we fall, we fall together, our lances broken.’

Solaria said nothing. Ahead of her the Westport shuddered. The great adamantium doors, emblazoned with the writhing, reptilian crest of House Varlock, had withstood the depredations of heretics and xenos alike for six millennia. The keep had never fallen. But the keep had never known an assault like this before.

The walls ahead of her were well defended, manned by Guardsmen of the 43rd Kallistan Rifles and the serf-soldiers of her own House. They’d been holding out all day, counter-attacking whenever the greenskins gained a section of parapet, selling their lives with blood and sweat. Yet it was not enough. The orks had come from the dust-mists of early dawn, bellowing their guttural war cries as they pushed east from the overrun manufactorums of Black Valley. Now the sun was dipping towards the arid mountains and still they came, their numbers thicker than ever. Major Crail, commanding the four Kallistan companies on the western defences, was reporting over fifty per cent casualties, and low ammunition.

Three times the aliens had scaled the bastion walls, clambering roughshod up ladders and piles of their own dead. Three times the Guardsmen had driven them back with rifle butt and bayonet, while the Imperial Knights of the Most Ancient and Noble House Varlock had blasted apart attackers at the foot of the walls with Avenger gatling cannons and Ironstorm missile pods. Ork artillery out on the dust dunes had replied, scarring the honoured heraldry of the masters of Varlock Keep with shell and rocket. Solaria’s suit, the Drakaina, was still chiming with damage reports – the joints of its right knee were crippled, and she’d jettisoned the left pauldron after a direct hit had left it twisted and buckled. The Avenger gatling was on its last belt feed.

The gate ahead of her buckled.

‘We’re out of promethium,’ crackled Major Crail’s voice over the link. ‘They’ve rolled some sort of battering ram up to the gate. We’ve got nothing left to throw at them.’

‘I have the gate,’ Solaria said. ‘Can your men hold the walls?’

‘Hold them? No. But we can die on them.’

‘Then that will have to do, major. Your entire regiment will be afforded the title of Errant-Brothers to House Varlock this day.’

‘You honour me, lady,’ the Guardsman said. Anything else was lost in the thunder of a heavy bolter opening up on full auto. Crail and his command squad were holding the top of the gatehouse, shooting and hacking at every green beast trying to clamber up to them. Beneath their position, the gate shuddered once more. Solaria switched to Kalyn and Audemar’s vox channel.

‘Stay on the walls until your ammunition is gone, then fight your way back to the inner bastion,’ she ordered. ‘Make the xenos pay for every inch.’

‘Mother–’ Kalyn began, but she cut the link. There was nothing more to say. Nothing more to do, other than fight and die. She shifted her stance on the Throne Mechanicum. Her Knight responding accordingly, extending its legs into a braced position and digging its splayed feet into the cobbles of the gatehouse courtyard. She cycled through the weapons systems one more time before bringing the vox horn to her mouth to activate the Drakaina’s external hailer grille. The reserve platoon of Kallistan Guardsmen flanking her looked up at the towering war machine.

‘Soldier-servants of the God-Emperor,’ she said. The words echoed around the courtyard, her voice given a metallic edge by the vox feedback. ‘Xenos unnumbered are about to break through that gate. Their only desire is to rip each and every one of us limb from limb. I intend to tear them apart first. We will seal up the Westport with ork dead, and heap their filthy bodies higher than our bastion parapets. We will light a corpse-pyre that will be seen from orbit. And when the next wave comes, we’ll do it again. And again, for as long as one foul xenos draws breath upon our sacred soil. For the Emperor and for House Varlock, honour through fealty.’

Maybe they cheered. Maybe they didn’t. Whatever noise the Guardsmen made was lost. The crash of the Westport collapsing drowned them out. The crest of House Varlock was shattered as the adamantium plates came slamming inwards, wreathed in fire and smoke. Roaring their mindless fury, the orks followed.

‘Open fire,’ Solaria ordered.

The snap-crack of Kallistan lasrifles was lost as the Drakaina’s weapons cycled up. Solaria’s Avenger gatling buckled, the recoil suppressors built into the venerable Knight’s right arm barely compensating for the furious kickback of the great weapon. Solaria locked the targeting beam onto the centre of the gateway, her optics stripping away layers of smoke and grit to reveal her targets. Greenskins burst apart in showers of stinking green meat and black blood, splattering the proud, arching gatehouse with viscera. More aliens came, fighting through the pulverised remains of those ahead, driven into an insatiable frenzy by the extremes of combat. They in turn died, the few not tracked by the Drakaina’s targeting systems picked off by the las fusillade laid down by the Kallistan infantrymen.

Solaria’s armour was hungry, desperate to spill more xenos blood. The battle for Varlock Keep had stung its proud machine-spirit, its ancient soul dishonoured by the presence of an enemy upon its walls. Solaria could feel its anger bleeding into her own thoughts, channelled via the cortical plugs and dermal links that bound her to the Throne Mechanicum. Her heartbeat was at one with the pulse of the machinery encasing her, her eyes seeing through the visor slit of its great helm, overlaid with targeting reticules, tracking icons and ammo counters. She was the Drakaina, an ancient deity of annihilation, undefeated and invincible, bestriding the battlefields of lesser mortals to deal destruction in the name of all those nobles who had gone before.

A lesser pilot would have been overwhelmed by the bloody calling of the ancient Imperial Knight, so strong and independent was its spirit. Solaria, however, had borne this suit into battle since she had been old enough to fill its Throne Mechanicum. Her will was no less iron that its own, tempered by half a century of experience. Even as it sought to impose its desires on her she drove her own demands deep into the core of its machine consciousness. Conserve ammunition. Track left. Lock. Execute. Track right. Lock. Execute. Conserve. She cut the orks down not with savage abandon, but with determined, icy care. Maximum control, maximum damage, as Audemar liked to say.

The anger emanating through the Drakaina’s systems spiked, and for a moment Solaria thought it was attempting to wrest control from her. Then she realised it had detected something through the gatehouse smoke, a split second before it registered with her via the optical implants. A challenger. It was grinding into Varlock, pulping the slaughtered bodies of the greenskins that had sought to rush in before it. The clatter of treads and the rattle of engines was eclipsed by a groaning shriek as the engine ground against the reinforced flanks of the gatehouse. Whatever it was, it was too big to fit, but it was making room.

‘Hold,’ Solaria ordered over the hailer, breaking off the fire impulses to her own weaponry. There was a crash as part of the gatehouse caved. The two graven statues of House Varlock’s founders, standing either side of the Westport’s opening, collapsed in a shower of broken stone. Their vanquisher rolled over them, belching oily black smoke. It was the mechanised battering ram that had broken through the gate, only Solaria now realised that it was designed for much more than simple breaching.

The great mound of yellow-painted junk, tusks and armour scraped to a halt just inside the courtyard, engines idling. As the Drakaina auto-scanned the machine for weak points it juddered and shifted. The jagged plates running the length of its spine began to lever forward into a vertical position. A bucket-jawed sensor block that had sat at the ram’s rear rose into position above it, taking on the aspect of some leering, metallic death’s head. The jaws of the great skull-ram that had punched through the gate, previously at the tip of the machine’s reinforced prow, clacked open, revealing the barrel of a crude battle cannon. Multi-jointed mechanical limbs folded out from its flanks, tipped with two huge buzz saws. As the thing completed its transformation, its rusting vox horns let loose a mighty, animalistic bellow, shaking dust from the broken gatehouse and causing the infantry beneath Solaria to cringe and clamp their hands to their ears.

The Drakaina had no time to answer the challenge. With a crash the ork battle walker’s cannon fired. The shell hit the Imperial Knight’s right limb, tearing apart the gatling in a blaze of fire and shattered adamantium. The impact drove Solaria into her Throne and forced the Knight back a step, its foot grinding sparks across the cobbles. The ork machine bellowed again and started to lurch forward on its great tracks.

‘For Varlock and the Emperor!’ Solaria snarled, launching herself forward. Her Knight responded in kind. The time for control had passed. She let the hatred and anger emanating from her armour flood her thoughts, binding her more closely to its ancient spirit. Their home was desecrated. Their honour was being mocked. Their ancient lineage was in danger of extinction. The ones who had done this would die.

With a roar the great Reaper chainsword built into the Drakaina’s left arm activated. Solaria was barely aware of the fact that she’d triggered it. The Knight plunged forward, leading with its undamaged left leg, driving towards the ork machine’s yellow-plated heart. The greenskin engine responded in kind, both buzz saws spinning forward to meet the Drakaina.

Solaria swept her left arm up, teeth bared, the cables and nodes linking her to the Throne Mechanicum rattling. The Drakaina mirrored the movement flawlessly, the great chainsword swinging up to intercept the right-hand saw as it juddered towards the Knight’s helm. The throaty revs of the Reaper rose to a mighty roar as they sheared through the limb, filling the air with fat sparks and slivers of shredded metal. The saw fell, embedding itself in the courtyard’s cobbles with a crunch.

The other saw blade was still coming at her.

She took a step back, but the buckled joints of the Drakaina’s right leg couldn’t respond to her thought-impulses fast enough. The saw hit the right side of her cuirass, shrieking and juddering as the great teeth bit. Warning runes exploded into red around her, and she felt the metal encasing her buckle. The Drakaina’s pain thrilled through the Throne and into her body, making her twist and cry out. The ork’s machine head was mere feet from the Knight’s, its red optic clusters glaring over its serrated jaw plates. It bellowed its victory as its saw started to chew through the Knight’s inner mechanisms.

‘Crail,’ Solaria managed through gritted teeth. ‘If you’re still alive, get off the gatehouse.’ Then, with all of her strength, she pushed.

The Drakaina went off its undamaged left leg, driving itself into the ork machine. The thing’s remaining saw arm bent torturously as the pressure of the Knight drove it back, even as it carved its way to Solaria’s Throne. Data feeds split and cracked and fuel lines ruptured around her, filling the senses of the master of House Varlock with the stench of fyceline. Still she drove her suit onwards. Its pain throbbed through her, filling every nerve ending, but beneath it all there was no imperative to stop, no pleading to disengage. It understood what its mistress was doing. It approved. Honour through fealty – it would crush this abominable invader.

The ork machine began to buckle as the Knight slammed into it. Its frontal armour plating, designed to withstand the Imperial barrage as it ground up to the gates, held, but the rear supports snapped and bent as the forward armour was driven back into it. The prow cannon crumpled, and Solaria found herself grinning through the pain, imagining the hordes of greenskins trapped inside the heavy construct being crushed to death by their own armour plating. She clenched her left fist and punched it forward, the motion mimicked by the Drakaina as it plunged its Reaper into the machine’s collapsing heart. The difference in construction was now obvious. It could not withstand the instruments of mankind’s wrath. It could not withstand the Drakaina. Solaria gutted it, feeling the revving teeth of her Reaper ripping through metal and then meat, rending the rival machine’s guts. The buzz saw juddered to a stop as it lost power, and there was a detonation as the battle cannon shells blew out the walker’s back, ripping apart its metal spine and central shaft.

The walker’s bucket jaw opened, as though to bellow one last alien roar, but no sound came out. Instead it went backwards, its structural integrity gone, lifting up off its bloody tracks as the Imperial Knight bore it towards the gatehouse. It crashed into the right flank of the Westport, pulverising stone, bending metal like foil, shattering the entrance to Varlock Keep. The proud stonework tumbled down with it, a cascade of rubble that pounded and broke the machine’s remnants. Solaria lunged out to keep her balance, fighting the forward momentum that had smashed the alien walker. One of the Drakaina’s feet found purchase on a shattered column. The toes dug in and gripped. As the rest of the Westport collapsed in on itself the Drakaina stood tall, a limb missing, haemorrhaging fuel, yet triumphant once again.

Solaria resisted the urge to slump in her throne. The pain of her suit’s wounds had become a dull ache, pulsing through her circuitry. The Knight was badly wounded, but they had to keep going. The machine-spirit understood. She felt the suit shift itself, bracing, adopting its battle stance once more.

‘Guardsmen,’ she said over the external hailer. ‘Move up and secure the breach.’ Already a fresh wave of greenskins were scrambling over the rubble, roaring and firing impotently up at the towering engine of destruction that blocked their path. Solaria snarled and swept her left arm forward, gutting a clutch of the damnable beasts with a great swing of the Reaper. More filled their place.

It wasn’t over. It had barely begun.

Audemar, Lord Solaris, cursed as the rune panel to his right flashed from amber to red. Weapons dry. The thermal cannon had finally expended the last of its pyrum fuel, reducing a surge of orks to a haze of organics as they sought to scale the bastion he had defended all day.

He would defend it all night as well, if he had to.

He thought-activated his thunderstrike gauntlet, the air throbbing as a nimbus of blue lightning wreathed the mighty fist. Orks were already on the bastion, swarming around his splayed feet, hacking impotently at the blessed adamantium of his suit with crude axes and cleavers. There were no more Guardsmen to drive them off – the last of the platoon that had defended the bastion alongside Audemar had fallen almost half an hour earlier, and the Household serfs manning the multilaser positions either side of him had long been hacked to pieces by fists and cleavers, their weapons wrecked. He was alone.

The presence of the orks on his walls disgusted him. He lashed out with one foot, grinding apart a clutch of the vile xenos with a hideous crunch. A backhanded swing of his gauntlet obliterated a trio more as they mounted the parapet, their bellows lost amidst the thunderclap detonation of the fist’s fearsome energy discharge. A reverse swipe crushed another two.

For all his might, Audemar knew he was not invulnerable. His suit’s armour was riven with damage, the sea-green heraldry of House Varlock defaced with silver gouges and pockmarked with hard round impacts. His Knight’s pain bled into his own consciousness via the neural circuitry of his Throne Mechanicum, a dozen fresh scars and unnumbered cuts flaring through his mind. The pain, however, was as nothing to the battle-fury burning through the machine’s proud spirit. This was where he belonged, atop the ramparts of Varlock Keep, vanquishing the foe with every swipe of his fist. He would die here, as the sun set, and he would die doing what House Varlock had always done – purging the enemies of mankind.

A crash tore through his thoughts. He twisted in his Throne, the Knight half turning in time to see part of the Westport collapsing. Lady Solaria’s Knight, the Drakaina, had smashed a xenos walker back through the ancient stonework, crushing it beneath a deluge of rubble. Even as Audemar watched, more orks rushed the breach, undeterred by the Imperial Knight defending the crest of shattered masonry.

They would never stop. They delighted in the carnage, in the slaughter, in the adrenaline-pounding frenzy of combat. Their species was devoted to it, in its entirety. Audemar, his consort and their son would all fall beneath the green tide, their bodies crushed, their ancient battle suits torn apart and plundered. Their heraldry would be defiled, and the memories of six millennia of Varlock nobles erased. As Audemar crushed another greenskin in his suit’s gauntlet, he patched through to the keep’s priority vox channel.

He might die atop these walls, but he was damned if he would see his heir and his consort both fall with him.

‘This is the bridge of the Final Judgement,’ crackled a voice over the vox, cut up by atmospheric interference. ‘Ident code and clearance, over.’

Audemar gave the codes and call sign between gritted teeth, trying to focus even as he dashed more greenskins to bloody ruin. They had almost overrun the bastion, the few Kallistan Guardsmen still holding the parapets further along the walls fighting on with their combat knives and fists. Audemar knew he probably had moments before an ork with an explosive charge made it to his feet. When that happened, it was all over.

‘Patch me through to Inquisitor Holt,’ he ordered. An ork shell exploded overhead, and his suit shuddered as its broad shoulders were battered by a hail of shrapnel.

‘Sir, you don’t have clearance to–’

‘Just do it!’ The Knight pilot heard what sounded like a dispute on the other end of the line, before a new voice answered him.

‘This is Inquisitor Damien Holt. I am speaking with Lord Audemar Solaris of House Varlock, yes?’

‘Correct,’ Audemar said, wincing as a rocket clanged off his left pauldron and twisted harmlessly away into the heavens before detonating. ‘My lord inquisitor, Varlock Keep is on the brink of falling. We are overrun. My consort, Lady Solaria and Knight Warden of House Varlock, logged a request for reinforcements with your Expeditionary fleet over six standard hours ago.’

‘I am aware of this,’ Holt responded before Audemar could go on. ‘The Departmento Munitorum strategos attached to Expedition Command deemed that the deployment of forces sufficient to salvage Varlock Keep would interfere with operations elsewhere. I therefore countermanded the request.’

‘We’re going to die down here,’ Audemar said. ‘All of us. If the greenskins capture the Knights of my Household they will pervert their sacred bodies and turn them against you. If they gain access to the resources of Varlock Keep, the arms and ammunition, the blessed Knight suits themselves–’

‘I trust you will ensure that doesn’t happen, Lord Solaris,’ Holt said, his voice cold. ‘Take whatever steps you deem necessary.’

‘You have betrayed us,’ Audemar snarled. ‘Millennia of service to the Imperium and this is our reward? To be abandoned, to be slaughtered like cattle while you sit in orbit and watch?’

‘Service is its own–’ Holt began, but his words were cut off by another transmission. The priority message overlaid the vox channel, and a new voice, deep and strong, reached the embattled Knight.

‘Hold firm, House Varlock. The Angels of Death are inbound.’

In the dream he was falling.

Veteran Sergeant Sebastien Corvus, commander of First Squad, Third Company of the Blood Ravens Chapter, knew it wasn’t a dream. The Adeptus Astartes rarely dreamed. But that was the easiest word to describe the thoughts – part visions, part false memories – that had been imposing themselves on his consciousness since the company had set out for Cyprus Ultima.

Thinking back on the strange recollection, he saw himself standing on an arid plain, beneath a sky heavy with grey clouds. In the distance he could see a mountain, jagged and barren, its peak hollowed out to form a vast basin. Sunlight pierced the clouds overhead, illuminating a rain of steel and flesh. There were bodies falling from the heavens above the mountain, uncounted and endless. Xenos and human alike, they cascaded from the skies in a continual wave, striking the mountaintop, filling the pit with a downfall of broken meat. Only one thing united them – they were all warriors.

And, somehow, Corvus knew his body was among them.

The voice of Gabriel Angelos brought him back to the present.

‘One minute, brethren. In the fires of war, we have purpose.’

‘We have purpose,’ echoed the ten battle-brothers of First Squad, the words leaving Corvus’ lips automatically.

‘Upon the anvil of destruction, we strike,’ Gabriel continued.

‘We strike,’ intoned the Blood Ravens.

‘Knowledge is power.’

‘Guard it well,’ the squad finished. Corvus looked up from his restraining harness, at the figure of Angelos. He alone stood, disdaining the benches of the Thunderhawk carrier in favour of the mag-locks of his modified Tartaros-pattern Terminator armour. His head was bowed, features lost in the shadows cast by the red troop-bay lighting, the service studs on his brow gleaming. In both fists he clasped God-Splitter, his mighty daemon hammer. The mere sight of the legendary weapon put Corvus’ mind at ease. Whatever disturbing visions he was suffering, they would not interfere with his thoughts now that they had finally reached the combat zone. Like all his brethren, battle gave him purpose.

There was a crash like thunder, and the aircraft lurched. Corvus realised it had just fired its spinal battle cannon. A moment later and a familiar, thudding vibration confirmed that the Thunderhawk’s automated bolters had also opened up. They were going in hot, and the cracking noises from the hull suggested that not all the fire was outgoing.

He glanced over his squad, their faces inscrutable behind their active battle plate, before turning his attention to his own equipment. His bolter was mag-locked to his flank, fully blessed and anointed. His armour’s auto-senses were on standby, waiting to link with the weapon the moment he grasped it, the icons monitoring his vitae signs reading steady. He flexed one gauntlet on the restraint harness, satisfied with the connectivity.

‘The xenos leader is mine,’ Gabriel said, looking up. Corvus met his flinty grey eyes, and nodded. There was no time to say anything more. The pitch of the engines changed, jolting turbulence indicating a landing vector. The harnesses juddered back automatically and First Squad stood as one, unclamping their bolters and locking their mag-boots for the final moments of descent. Corvus mouthed one last prayer to his venerable weapon, his armour’s auto-senses binding with its targeting systems and ammo counter.

He was still falling.

The noise from outside was audible now over the decelerating engines – the unmistakable foundry-hammer of war, a thunderous accompaniment to the bellowing of an alien warhost that outnumbered them many hundreds to one. They were striking right into the heart of the invaders, straight and true, the Emperor’s righteous judgement made manifest. As Corvus felt the Thunderhawk make its jarring landing he knew he wouldn’t have it any other way.

On some distant, lonely mountaintop, his body slammed into the thousands already filling the corpse-crater.

The troop-bay ramps dropped. Corvus was the first out of the prow entrance, a battle oath on his lips. Before him a wall of xenos warriors presented itself, rushing forward amidst a haze of dust. Even sealed within his red-and-bone power armour, the fury of the assault threatened to overwhelm him. The Thunderhawk’s bolters were pounding death into the orks at point-blank range as the greenskins tried to mob them, reacting to the airborne interlopers the only way they knew how. The lowering of the prow hatch had crushed at least one greenskin and driven the others back, affording Corvus a split second to assess the enemy as he stepped out onto Cyprus Ultima.

He opened fire. The nearest greenskins went down, bursting apart beneath the hail of mass-reactive bolts. Even their hideously tough xenos physiology wasn’t able to withstand the sacred firepower of Corvus’ blessed weapon. The Blood Ravens spread out behind their sergeant, fanning around the Thunderhawk as they secured the landing zone. Corvus’ battle-brothers were implacable, driving the roaring xenos back with the Thunderhawk’s supporting firepower thundering above them.

‘Contact ahead,’ Corvus voxed over the inter-squad channel. The leader of the most immediate ork mob was nearby, identified by its brute bulk, looming over the heads of its minions a hundred yards ahead of the sergeant. As Corvus reloaded, covered by Brother Tranz, the ork chieftain bellowed and began to shoulder its way towards the Space Marines.

If there were two things greenskins couldn’t resist, it was a challenge to authority, and the prospect of a good fight. The Blood Ravens were going to give this beast both.

‘Cordon secured,’ Corvus said over the vox, opening fire once more on the orks between him and the chieftain. They were receiving return fire, crude slugs battering at their power armour and filling the dry, dusty air with sizzling metal. Three of the vitae runes on the sergeant’s visor uplink were already indicating minor injuries among his squad. Utterly surrounded and exposed, they couldn’t possibly maintain their small perimeter for more than a few minutes. This was going to have to be well timed.

The pitch of the Thunderhawk’s engines changed again as it lurched skywards, its sponson weaponry swivelling while it continued to unload into the orks crowding First Squad. The chieftain and its bodyguards had punched and kicked their way to the fore of the mob, roaring at their underlings in their bestial xenos tongue. The chieftain itself – a solid slab of scarred, dark green muscle, layered in plates of heavy yellow armour – had locked its beady, rage-filled eyes on Corvus. It roared a challenge as it came at him, a great mechanical claw extended to snap around his throat.

‘Falling back,’ Corvus voxed, giving ground as the ork came at him. He kept firing, punching holes in the greenskins following up on their leader’s charge, switching from one target to the next with experienced ease. The rest of the Blood Ravens cordon held firm, pouring fire into the horde as it rose towards them like some irrepressible green tide. Only Corvus retreated. And only the ork chief made it into the centre of the squad’s perimeter with him.

‘Strike,’ the sergeant said into the vox. The ork was upon him, roaring its fury, reaching for him with its wicked claw. Corvus realised he’d almost backed all the way to the opposite side of the circle. He had nowhere left to go.

Then the thunderbolt fell, and saved his life. It came down with an almighty crash of discharged energy, followed by the earth-shuddering force of its impact with the surface of Cyprus Ultima. Only Corvus’ auto-stabilisers kept him upright. The landing threw up a cloud of dust and clods of dry dirt, shot through with thick strings of gore – the ork chieftain had been completely annihilated, reduced to pulverised organic matter by the strike of a weapon as ancient as the Imperium itself.

As the dust and blood settled, Gabriel Angelos rose. He had leapt directly from the Thunderhawk’s hold. Servos in his Terminator armour whirred and grated as he turned to survey Corvus. The Chapter Master was splattered with the gore of the chieftain, and God-Splitter, the mighty daemon hammer, still crackled in both fists. Nothing could have survived the Blood Raven’s strike, not when it had been delivered from the Thunderhawk holding station forty feet above.

‘Brethren,’ Gabriel said into the vox, still looking at Corvus. ‘Now is your time. In the Emperor’s name, strike.’

The sky was filled with fire and adamantium as two more Thunderhawks swooped down on blazing contrails, bolters hammering, battle cannons blasting bloody furrows through the greenskins. The Assault Marines of Seventh and Eighth Squads barrelled from the open hatches of the gunships, their jump packs flaring to life, flamers and bolt pistols igniting. The orks below were torn to pieces.

Corvus reloaded again and re-formed the circle. The tide had turned. Gabriel’s pinpoint strike had crushed the leader of the ork assault on Varlock Keep, and suddenly the mobs were uncertain, torn between their desire to continue attacking the overrun bastions or turning back to face the new threat. Gabriel clearly had no intention of giving them the time to reorganise. He hefted God-Splitter once more and gestured with the mighty hammer past Corvus. The roaring of chainblades heralded the assaults of Seventh and Eighth Squads around them. Gabriel’s war cry, even unaugmented by his vox, carried easily over the sounds of slaughter.

‘Space Marines, attack!’

The bridge of the Final Judgement appeared truly ancient, though it was not. When Inquisitor Holt had taken command of the decommissioned capital ship, he had spent a small fortune having its command deck redesigned. Gone were the vessel’s dark rustwood panels and tiled mosaic floor, replaced with cold stone flagging and unadorned pillars that supported a vault lost in shadows. The chill space echoed with the clipped footsteps of deck officers, their whispers, and the soft whir and chime of cogitators and oculus stands. It was more like some ancient crypt than the nerve centre of a vast, star-faring voyager.

The changes had all been quite deliberate. Holt had refashioned the bridge so it resembled the interior of the Schola Progenium basilica he had grown up in. The orphaned son of an Imperial Commander from the Lynthera sub-sector, Holt’s earliest memories were of scrubbing between the cold, hard flagstones of the refectory hall with a tiny pick-brush, beneath the equally cold, hard eyes of Drill-Abbott Fulch.

Holt had grown to manhood in the Schola facilities on Telarch II, and there had discovered the unbending zeal and fervour that so characterised all Progena. His future, however, had not followed the traditional routes for the Imperium’s finest – the Militarum Tempestus or the Commissariat. Instead, the night before his graduation ceremony, he’d been awoken and dragged from his dorm bunk by one of the hall wardens. Minutes later, shivering in nothing but his night shift, he’d found himself standing before the man he would later think of as his adoptive father. That night he had joined the ranks of the God-Emperor’s Most Holy Ordos.

‘They are coming,’ said Henghast. Holt’s gaze turned from the viewscreens he’d been monitoring to his astropath. She was seated at her crystalline psy-desk, bony hands splayed across her tarot, the dark green folds of her astropathic robes hanging heavy around her withered frame.

‘What did you say?’ Holt demanded, pacing across the cogitator pit. ‘You should know better than to tax me with your riddles.’

‘You know well enough to whom I refer,’ Henghast said, a smile twisting her thin lips. Her hand clutched at one of her cards, inscribed with a lean, ghost-like figure reaching out towards a cluster of glowing orbs.

‘The star wanderers,’ she said. ‘The spiders in the web.’

‘How long?’ Holt asked, leaning across the psy-deck board, fists planted on its glassy surface.

‘Not long,’ Henghast said, letting the card drop. ‘They stand upon the threshold, and their fingers are already on the door.’

‘Then Acheron draws near,’ Holt said, turning back towards the viewscreens. They displayed the edges of the Cyprus system, a constantly cycling feed picking up the images redirected from augur stations and monitoring posts on the borders of real space. Currently they were detecting nothing untoward, but Holt knew that would soon change. That was why he was here, with the full might of the Imperium at his command – Knights, Astra Militarum, the Navy, even the god-warriors of the Adeptus Astartes. All would be needed for the coming trial.

‘My lord inquisitor,’ said a low, firm voice. Holt noted the presence of his chief Interrogator, Winlow, as the stocky operative stepped down into the bridge’s inner cogitator pit.

The Inquisitorial agent was the image of Holt in his younger days – as the inquisitor had moulded the bridge of his flagship, so he had moulded his foremost apprentice. Winlow wore the plain green robes of an Ordo Xenos field agent beneath a suit of ceramite-finished flakplate. Holt always bore his own battle armour in public, as his master had before him. For all its secretive nature, the Inquisition was both sword and shield to the rest of mankind. Holt had learned the value of looking the part, regardless of time or place.

Like his master, Winlow wore his blond hair cropped close. The only immediately obvious difference was the blue hydra crest tattooed over his left eye, a holdover from his childhood in the reef gangs of Voltaris. The young interrogator had requested the synth-skin grafts to have it removed countless times, but Holt had refused. A man’s origins should never be erased or forgotten, for with them it was possible to judge how high he had risen in life, or how far he had fallen. Such judgements were part of the Inquisition’s reason for being.

‘What is it?’ Holt demanded, not bothering to mask his irritation. He’d ordered the entire bridge not to disturb him or the scrying of his astropath. Only Winlow would be bold enough to override his instructions.

‘Word from the vox decks, sire,’ Winlow said, offering a short bow as he stepped down to Holt’s level. ‘Regarding the fighting on the surface.’

‘If it’s another mewling request from the Knight Warden, I already left instruction that it’s to be ignored,’ Holt said.

‘It isn’t from Lady Solaria, sire.’ Winlow said. ‘We’ve ascertained why Warden Audemar broke communications unexpectedly with us when you refused his last request.’

‘Explain.’

‘The augur staff are reporting that the Adeptus Astartes battle-barge Dauntless has moved into low orbit above Cyprus Ultima, and has disgorged a number of transports. Their trajectory will take them directly into the engagement ongoing at Varlock Keep.’

‘God-Emperor damn them,’ Holt said, and snapped a finger at one of the tele-savants manning the viewscreens. ‘Can we get visuals on the surface?’

‘Hacking the Knights’ encryption would take time, sir,’ one of the drones said, not meeting Holt’s gaze.

‘Then contact the augur array,’ Holt told Winlow. ‘I want maximum-resolution scans of the Varlock battlezone, immediately.’

As Winlow clambered from the pit Holt turned back to the viewscreens, which flickered with new images of the planet below.

‘It’s him,’ said Henghast, still smiling, her hands dancing delicately across her cards.

‘Of course it’s him,’ said Holt, his voice bitter. ‘Who else would so brazenly countermand one of my orders?’

The Expeditionary fleet was to waste none of its resources preserving the Imperial Knights of Cyprus Ultima from the ork looters that infested the planet, and yet here they were, committing the expedition’s finest warriors to doing just that. When Acheron appeared, they would need every single one of the Angels of Death. Defending Varlock was a waste.

The Final Judgement’s powerful scanners focused in on the Knight fortress, a dark blot on the surface of the arid world far below. Holt watched in silence as the images transmitted to the viewscreens before him resolved, piece by piece. A dark green sea surrounded the bastion walls of the keep, shot through with fire and smoke. In the midst of it, like a bloody rock cast adrift, the inquisitor could see the red and white heraldry of the Blood Ravens. They had struck right at the heart of the alien horde, carving out a cordon with blade, bolter and the support of their Thunderhawk gunships. As the resolution increased, Holt picked out the figure leading the wedge of warriors as they made for Varlock’s shattered gateway. Clad in great plates of Tactical Dreadnought armour and wielding a warhammer wreathed in energy, he was entirely unmistakable. Holt’s lip curled with disgust as he took in the sight of the hammer, and it required all of his hypno-induction training and reflex control not to lash out at the screen.

That weapon should be his.

‘The feed is good, sire,’ Winlow said as he rejoined his master in the cogitator pit. ‘Is it as we feared?’

‘Of course,’ Holt said. ‘I should have predicted that he would seek to cause difficulty at every opportunity. His disrespect for the authority of the ordo is flagrant, even by the standards of his meddling Chapter.’

Winlow didn’t reply, and Holt continued to watch as, yard by yard, the Blood Ravens fought their way to Varlock Keep. Around them the press of aliens appeared to be lessening. Presumably the Adeptus Astartes had eliminated the mob’s leader, a tactic that frequently proved useful in stymying ork offensives. Holt took a slow, silent breath, working at easing the tension evident in his rigid posture. It did no good to let others see him affected by the Space Marine’s insubordination. There were more important things to focus on – the imminent arrival of the daemon world of Acheron being just one of them.

‘Cut the feed,’ he ordered, turning his back on the viewscreen. ‘And prepare me an encrypted vox link with the starforts.’ The orks on Cyprus Ultima would be contained, prior to the arrival of the Expeditionary Fleet’s primary assets.

And by then, Inquisitor Holt would have worked out exactly what to do with Chapter Master Gabriel Angelos.

Dawn. Light was a haze, clouded by the dust that hung heavy around Varlock Keep. Whether it was the residue kicked up by the broken ork horde, or had blown down from the distant mountaintops, Sergeant Corvus couldn’t tell.

The Blood Ravens assembled around their Chapter Master. They made for so many looming, bloody spectres, their armour scarred and caked in blood and dust. The Assault Marines of Seventh and Eighth Squads had lost two battle-brothers apiece – Forvind, Kern, Luko and Isidaur. Only one Tactical Marine from First Squad had fallen – Matthias, cut in half by a vicious axe-blow from one of the ork chieftain’s bodyguards. As far as Corvus was concerned, the squad had been lucky. The strategic scans conducted as they’d plunged through the atmosphere had warned of a possibility of over fifty per cent casualties resulting from a direct intervention. As it stood no one was unharmed, but comparatively few had fallen.

Forvind, Kern, Luko, Isidaur and Matthias now lay among the million-strong mound of corpses, crushed and bloody, atop a distant, lonely mountaintop.

Gabriel said nothing of their losses. He’d been taciturn ever since ordering the intervention from the Dauntless in orbit. Perhaps the operation was calling up dark memories. It was well known the Chapter Master had little regard for the meddling of the ordo, and few men personified that meddling more than Inquisitor Holt, commander in chief of the entire Expeditionary Fleet.

The wind picked up, shifting the dust clouds with a soft sigh. All around the Space Marines, carnage reigned. They had fought through the night as the ork horde had disintegrated around them, a lonely bulwark of plasteel and ceramite, painted in xenos blood. The corpses of their attackers lay in thick clumps around them, intermingled with the waves gunned down by fire from Varlock’s walls. Those walls were hidden now by the dust haze. Corvus wondered how many of their defenders yet lived. If the Blood Ravens had arrived minutes later, they would have been too late to save the garrison.

‘Extraction is inbound,’ Gabriel said, his low tone barely carrying over the wind’s whisper. ‘We will return to orbit and rearm, before the next wave strikes.’

Corvus suppressed the urge to point out that the Inquisition was unlikely to overlook another intervention. Holt’s briefing dockets had been clear. The Expeditionary Fleet was in the Cyprus system for one reason and one reason only – to contain and, if possible, annihilate the daemon world of Acheron the moment it tore from the warp. The Imperial Knights of Cyprus Ultima were not their concern, even though they were beset by greenskins.

Of course, there was never a chance that the Blood Ravens were going to stand by while the enemies of the Emperor triumphed.

A low tremor, running through the gory dirt beneath Corvus’ boots, disturbed the veteran sergeant’s thoughts. Distant, thudding footfalls reached him, followed by the clank and clatter of great machine servos. He glanced at Gabriel, who nodded, his graven features streaked with dust and gore.

‘Blood Ravens,’ said Corvus. ‘Attention.’ The Space Marines came to immediately, the crash of ceramite echoing out across the scarred battlefield. Corvus’ auto-senses probed the dust clouds, stripping them back layer by layer to reveal a monstrous trio of mismatching shadows, broad-shouldered and bow-backed, approaching them from the direction of the keep. After a few moments, the green and blue drake heraldry of an Imperial Knight Household registered with his file scanner.

The three war machines emerged from the dust-mist like demigods of old, every footstep grinding slain orks into the dirt. Gabriel planted God-Splitter’s bloody head at his feet, its disruptor field deactivated. Corvus and his battle-brothers retained their rigid posture. As the Knights approached, Corvus noted the extent of their battle damage. Their banners were tattered, and their adamantium hides scarred silver or black by the strike of rocket, shell, flamer and countless small arms rounds. The central walker had lost its entire weaponised right limb, and walked with a pronounced limp, its knee servos grating.

The Knights came to a halt before the Space Marines, grinding their feet into the churned-up earth. A klaxon blared, and the centremost of the three lowered its remaining weapon-limb, a great chainsword. The other two did likewise, dipping their armoury in salute.

‘Declare yourself,’ blared a voice from the vox grille of the towering construction. It was female, though the metallic distortion of the vox gave it a machine edge. Gabriel left God-Splitter planted on its head and made the sign of the aquila across his battered breastplate.

‘My name is Gabriel Angelos, Chapter Master of the Blood Ravens. These are my battle-brothers.’

‘Hail and well met, Chapter Master Angelos. I am Lady Rebek Solaria, Knight Warden of House Varlock and Mistress of this keep. I owe that last title to the intervention of you and your brethren. Had you not struck when you did we would certainly have been overrun. We owe you a debt of honour.’

‘We owe all our debts to the Emperor,’ Gabriel said simply. ‘Fulfil yours by continuing in His blessed service.’

‘If only all went about their duties with such purity of purpose,’ Lady Solaria intoned. ‘You have come with the Expeditionary Fleet?’

‘I have,’ Gabriel confirmed. ‘At the request of Inquisitor Damien Holt.’

‘I presume that your intervention did not meet with the august inquisitor’s approval?’

‘Few things meet with Holt’s approval, Lady Solaria. He would conserve the expedition’s strength to deal with Acheron. For my own part, I would not stand idly by and watch xenos scavengers butchering the Emperor’s servants.’

‘So the rumours are true then? That the daemon world Acheron will soon re-emerge from the warp?’

‘Many believe it. Enough to assemble in this system to intercept and destroy it.’

‘House Varlock would walk with you, but not before we purge our realm of this xenos taint.’ A twitch of the Knight’s mighty foot crushed another greenskin corpse into the dirt.

‘The orks will be back,’ said Gabriel. ‘Our orbital scans show that this was but a fraction of their strength. Departmento Munitorum strategos have claimed they are gathered here seeking loot from all those coming to greet Acheron’s arrival. They are scavengers, feeding off our war efforts.’

‘For now,’ Solaria said. ‘You surely have more knowledge of the green menace than I, Chapter Master. If they can gather enough momentum and resources, Inquisitor Holt will suddenly find them to be far more than a mere annoyance.’

‘Which is why my brethren and I will continue to assist you as long as we are able. I am receiving reports from orbit that another warband is converging on us right now.’

Click here to buy Dawn of War III.

To Matthew, Gohar and James, my original Dawn of War battle-brothers.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2017
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