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Shadow of the Eighth – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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I

CINNABAR’S FOLLY

Minka’s boots were misshapen lumps of thick trench mud. They weighed down each step like lead. They made moving slow and ponderous. They’d get her killed, she thought, as she pushed along the zigzag access trench.

Her platoon should have reached the front-line trenches an hour before, but this stretch had suffered ferocious counter-bombardment and it was hard to find their way when the trenches had been blasted apart.

A rocket screamed overhead, descending towards the heretic lines and erupting with an earth-shattering blast. ‘The attack is starting in ten minutes,’ Sparker shouted. He sounded as rattled as she was.

‘We’ll be there,’ she told him as he led his squad left, and she went right. The trench before them had taken a direct hit and it was now a mess of broken earth. She put a muddy foot to the firing step and risked a look at no-man’s-land.

The enemy’s artillery bunkers were ten miles back from the front, a forest of Earthshaker batteries, each one firing six times a minute, each shell’s arching parabola a twenty-second flight over artillery lines, supply depots, communication and support trenches, saps, banks of wire and no-man’s-land, before it smashed down into the mud of Cinnabar’s Folly.

The air was full of whistling shrapnel, the landscape seething and tortured with eruptions of blasted earth, but she thought she could see the line of trench ahead.

‘Follow me!’ Minka shouted, but no one could hear a bloody thing.

She crawled forward, head buried into her shoulders, hands slipping on the broken clods of earth. She couldn’t tell if the wet lumps were mud or flesh.

This land had once been red, but war had bled the moon of Cinnabar’s Folly dry. It was a burnt and blackened corpse, stained black with oil and flesh and fyceline soot. But dead or not, Minka told herself through gritted teeth, this moon belonged to the God-Emperor, and the forces of the Imperium had come to reclaim it, crater by crater, yard by yard, inch by filthy inch.

In the hellish ruin, the only guide to the line of the trench was the length of razor wire, fixed in place by pigtail iron stakes. Curtains of smoke swept over the battlefield. They stank of sulphur and promethium. She felt the fizz as las-bolts and hard rounds stitched overhead.

A stray slug slammed into her canteen. She felt the impact, felt the water start to trickle down her fatigues as at last a line of sandbags came into view. Shells screamed earthwards as Minka dragged herself over the lip and tumbled into the trench on the other side, filthy water rising up to her elbows.

One by one, her platoon made it, skidding down the same slide. They lost two on the crossing.

Blanchez pushed her sniper rifle before her, and then tumbled after. ‘Darin and Kastov,’ she said. She looked shaken.

Minka checked her chronometer. Seven minutes left. They zigzagged forward through the battlescape of razor wire, corpses and craters.

At the next intersection a signpost had been nailed to the flakboard panels. There were a series of names and arrows: Bastion Nine to the right, Death Run and Viper’s Neck to the left.

A rotting trooper had been buried in the wall of the trench and pale maggots dripped into the filthy water as Lieutenant Minka Lesk stumbled past, one hand on the flakboard reveting. A mortar shell landed just above them. A fountain of filth splattered down. Another shell landed. Long as well. And then a third as Minka rounded the corner and half tripped over a body already sinking into the filth: dead trooper. Sniper shot. Half the head missing.

‘We’re nearly there,’ she said, checking her chronometer. Six minutes until the attack.

Bastion Nine was a rockcrete pillbox that dominated a low ridge looking down across the blasted plains. Minka found the Forax Binary troops sheltering in the bunker, waiting for relief.

‘Who is in command?’ Minka demanded.

The captain came forward. Under his flak armour his greatcoat was ripped and torn, and one sleeve was missing, the stuffing pale where it had been torn away. His name, Iago, was stencilled onto the chest of his flak armour breastplate. His visor was pushed back, and his face was dark with stubble and mud. His eyes were hollow.

He was trembling as he spoke. ‘You’re the relief?’

‘Yes,’ Minka said. The 101st were what the Munitorum classed as ‘fresh troops’.

Captain Iago was too spent to speak, but he couldn’t hide his disappointment. He started to cry. The Forax Binary troops had been in the front-line trenches for a month, and the stress was starting to take its toll.

She pulled him up into the trench. ‘Show me the front line.’

He still couldn’t find his voice, so he pointed instead. There was a crude trenchscope. A hundred yards down the valley she could make out the zigzag of dark lines marked out with thickets of razor wire. She was almost surprised to see that the plans were largely accurate.

Her Swabian power sabre hung at her side. A memento from her last deployment. The basket hilt was smeared in mud; she wiped off the worst as she checked her lieutenant-issue Mauler-pattern bolt pistol, and the three barrel magazines clipped to the small of her back.

The Forax Binary troops were already pulling back as the Cadians hurried left and right, getting themselves into position. Minka risked another look. No-man’s-land was a mess of matted razor-wire thickets, corpses and craters, flaring with explosions.

She paused, looking for the best route of attack as an Earthshaker shell roared overhead.

There were two minutes left before the assault. Minka closed her eyes and allowed herself a deep breath in. It was weeks since she’d seen the sun. Weeks since she’d had a good night’s sleep. Months, perhaps… It was hard to remember and she felt like she’d fought a battle already, and all they had done was reach the starting line.

Vivran was right behind her, bowed under the weight of the vox-caster, hand-mic pressed to her mouth as she reported that they were in place and ready.

Minka went along checking each of the sergeants. They were ready. As she came back to the bastion, Jaromir already had the heavy stubber in place, and fired off a quick salvo to check the workings.

‘Ready!’ he shouted.

Minka slapped his back. There was barely a minute before the attack.

She touched her pistol and the sword-hilt, pulled her water bottle free and tossed it into the mud, checked her magazines, and took another deep breath.

‘Incoming!’ a voice shouted.

The shell landed in no-man’s-land. They felt the tremors through their boots as a fountain of filth billowed up and the mud slid down between the revetments. A gobbet of mud hit Minka’s shoulder. It was black, but it had the sticky consistency of flesh. She knocked it off into the trembling bilge-water.

The warning shout went up again. A blunt projectile hit the ground twenty feet away and showered them all in another torrent of muck, but the distinctive screech did not end with an explosion.

‘Dud,’ Yedrin said.

A memory from Cadia went through Minka like a cold blade.

‘Drop pod!’ she roared as she leapt to the firing step, bolt pistol ready.

The adamantine tulip loomed up over the wire, the posts, the tilted tank traps and the corpses, the rifle butts scattered across the rotting devastation of no-man’s-land. It sat at an angle within a flooded crater, steam and smoke billowing up from the superheated metal.

There was no insignia Minka could see. Just the heat-stripes and discolouring of its descent. But she knew what was inside, knew what was coming and her mouth was dry, her heartbeat thundering. In an instant she had gone from veteran trooper to hunted animal.

‘Ready to repel!’ she shouted as the petals slammed down.

Instead of Space Marines, a blizzard of frag shells blasted out.

The storm was as sudden and fierce as a monsoon shower, circling the drop pod with a ring of devastation. Grenades landed in the trench and tore through flesh and armour.

The air was full of shouts of pain and alarm. A rattling voice called for a medic. Bodies lay like dolls strewn about, bleeding and broken. Vivran’s fingers were tight on Minka’s arm. Her eyes were wide, like she had just woken from hell. She was breathing rapidly as she made a dreadful mewling sound.

‘You’re all right,’ Minka said as she pulled a suture strip from her belt. Her hands were slippery with mud and blood. She looped it round the bloody stump of Vivran’s leg and pulled it tight. ‘Stay with me!’ Minka hissed as she pulled the knot closed and tightened it.

Vivran nodded, breathing quickly.

‘Get her out of here!’ Minka shouted, and started to order the defence in depth. ‘Stand ready!’ she roared. ‘One minute!’

Two of Yedrin’s squad stripped the vox-caster away, then lifted Vivran, one at the shoulders, one by the remaining leg as someone else shouted another warning. Bohdan discarded his own backpack and pulled the vox-caster on. Another drop pod slammed down fifty feet ahead of them, with the same blunt, earth-shaking force. They threw themselves against the flakboard revetments as the frag shower passed.

Minka knew what was coming next.

‘Get a heavy weapons team! Plasma, melta, anything!’ Minka yelled.

Bohdan had one finger in his ear. ‘Yes,’ he shouted. ‘We’re in position. Raise the alarm. Space Marine intrusion! Bastion Nine.’

There was an observation trench that ran close to where the drop pods stood.

‘With me,’ Minka told Jeremias. She ran along the front-line trench, five troopers behind her. The duckboard was narrow, the flakboards pinned into place with iron stakes and lengths of rebar.

Jeremias nodded, easing the flamer shoulder-straps over his flak armour. He flicked the ignition stud and set the pilot flame alight.

They splashed through the wet, and turned right into the observation trench. They were halfway along when ash started to fall. It was dirty and grey. A flake landed on the back of Minka’s hand and she realised it was snow. She felt the chill, saw the delicate and unique pattern of the ice flake, and she heard the crackle of static, smelled the stink of ozone.

Minka’s skin goose-pimpled. She put her hand up for the others to slow.

Krail was pale. ‘Something’s behind us,’ she whispered. ‘And it wasn’t there a moment ago…’

‘I’ve got it,’ Jeremias said, pushing to the front, flamer ready, and suddenly everyone was shouting and calling for reinforcements.

Over it all came the distinctive clunk of powered armour.

Jaromir half-crouched in Bastion Nine. He leant into the heavy stubber, stared down the gun-barrel, through the round metal spider-web sights, into the matted thickets of razor wire, pigtail posts, corpses and craters – keeping the drop pod in view.

He blinked as the air beside the drop pod started to stir. It was like a heat wave, rippling from a hot road. But instead of rising, it was swirling in upon itself, till it was a blue-and-white vortex, then a sudden shaft of light, within which a figure took shape.

Jaromir was not a quick thinker, but there were times when you didn’t need to think. ‘Contact!’ he shouted and started to fire, even as the figure emerged.

The heavy stubber kicked into his shoulder, the brass shell cases rattling to the floor. There was no way he could miss. The immensity of an Astartes Terminator appeared in the mud of no-man’s-land, its size and bulk impossible in a space where there had been only air, its trophy rack rising five feet above its head.

It was so big the rest of Jaromir’s squad could see it over the trench tops.

‘Throne!’ one of them cursed.

‘Fire!’ Jaromir shouted as he kept the figure within the circle of his sights, kicking off a long salvo.

The rounds slammed into the huge figure and… did nothing.

The Terminator barely seemed to notice. Jaromir kept tracking it as it stamped through the tangle of razor wire. The bullets shattered on the surface of its armour or slewed off into no-man’s-land.

‘I can’t see it!’ Jaromir called out as it dropped down into the observation trench – and then the Terminator’s trophy rack appeared, jerking over the top of the sandbags, each ponderous step bringing it towards the trench he was in.

The squad were ready, in firing position, kneeling, lasrifles braced.

Everyone was shouting now. The las-bolts were useless. There was nothing they could do to stop it. ‘Where are the frekking plasmas?’ Jaromir shouted as the Terminator turned towards them with the clank of metal and the hiss of pistons.

The Terminator filled the end of the trench as an adult would fill a child’s chair, making the space look preposterously small and cramped. Jeremias backed towards them, flamer spewing a roaring blast of fire.

Minka’s squad were first in line.

‘It’s still coming!’ Krail shouted as she caught a glimpse of the figure, striding through the flames.

There was the mechanical roar of a storm bolter and Jeremias came apart, his disintegrating body dancing as the rounds tore into him.

His promethium tank exploded. The fireball rolled down the trench towards where Minka stood.

‘Stand firm!’ Minka ordered as she scrambled back, bolt pistol raised.

The Terminator was a square hulking block of black-and-brass armour, ten feet tall. It strode through the storm of las-bolts as if they were snowflakes, patches of promethium flickering and burning on its slab-armour.

The Terminator’s head was hunched into the middle of its chest, with vast armour pads rising on either side. Its size, and the terror radiating from it, stunned them all: spikes adorned its armour, each impaled with a human head, casually thrust onto the barbed tip. Attached to one arm was a chainfist, the opposite hand wielding the storm bolter, which clicked as it reloaded and fired again.

The troopers in front of Minka disappeared as bolt shells shredded flesh and bone, reducing them to ribbons of steaming flesh. A red mist hung in the air as the Terminator followed Minka. She kept backing away.

Minka felt the red targeting-light on her face, tripping on a dead body as she threw herself sideways, narrowly avoiding a furious salvo of bolt shells that tore chunks out of the trench walls.

It was all she could do to hold on to her bolt pistol, shake off the slime and wipe her eyes clear as she crawled forward, one hand trailing the trench walls.

Her helmet rang out as she slammed head first into a ferrocrete wall.

The blow dazed her for a moment, and she had to clean her hand on the back of her jacket before she could smear her eyes clear again. She had crawled into a dead end.

She drew her sword and held her pistol out, tried to pray through trembling teeth for the Emperor, or any of His saints, to come and help her as the Terminator came on with all the paralysing speed of a nightmare: colour-distorted gun barrels steaming with coolants, the cruel brass teeth of its chainfist starting to spin.

It turned its body towards her as if in slow motion, and Minka held her pistol out before her, hand firm and power sword raised.

‘For Cadia!’ Minka shouted, or was it, ‘The Emperor Protects!’ She could not tell.

The words died on her lips, she was so shaken with horror, as the Terminator took a huge stride towards her and opened fire.

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Great Britain in 2023.
This eBook edition published in 2023 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Represented by: Games Workshop Limited – Irish branch, Unit 3, Lower Liffey Street, Dublin 1, D01 K199, Ireland.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Marzena Nereida Piwowar.

Shadow of the Eighth © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2023. Shadow of the Eighth, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
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ISBN: 978-1-80407-445-9

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