Chapter 106 - The Battle of Baal (3)
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Dante could not stop the Tyranid Lictors from destroying the Angelicastle's Void Shields.
The neophytes in the Blood Coffins were lost. The defensive lines on Baal Prime began to crack.
Without the Void Shields, swaths of Tyranid spore pods rained into the Angelicastle. Massive war-beasts fired living ammunition and tore apart the Blood Chapters' heavy weapon emplacements one by one.
In the void, the warships of Sanguinius's sons grew fewer with every passing hour. Dante had ordered them to pull back from Baal Prime and fight a guerrilla campaign in the surrounding space. They ignored him. These warriors chose to meet the hive fleets head-on.
There was no other choice, was there?
To relieve the pressure on the ground, the fleet commanders and the remaining successor Chapter Masters ordered their warships into boarding actions. One-way boarding actions. The close cooperation between the Chapters ended, faster than Dante had anticipated. Inside the second defensive line within the Angelicastle, the Tyranid horde carved the successor Chapters apart into detachments, companies, and isolated squads.
This was the bugs' favorite trick. These beasts knew exactly how powerful the Sons of Sanguinius were, so they gave them no chance to unite. Divide them. Then slowly close the net.
A slow strangulation.
Dante knew it.
He had no answer for it.
All he could do was hold the defensive lines across every street and district of the Angelicastle. The cunning Tyranids sent small units to destroy the Blood Chapters' communications, leaving the Sons of Sanguinius deaf and blind to their brothers' positions. Dante had already lost contact with the battle-brothers on both moons.
They had likely been devoured.
Yet the Tyranids were not invincible. Lacking sufficient biomass, they could not throw everything at the Sons of Sanguinius's lines in a single overwhelming surge.
Today. Tonight. Dante and his battle-brothers held.
The enemy receded like a tide.
Dante sat wearily on a pile of rubble and looked at the casualty figures his subordinates had brought him.
Of the original 12,000 stationed on Baal Prime, fewer than 7,500 remained.
Nearly half of his finest warriors and company captains had fallen in the bug-tide. Several Chapter Masters among them.
The list was long. Dante read through it, and then a splitting pain detonated behind his eyes. His focus shattered, not from his own suffering, but because he could feel it happening around him. His adjutants. His subordinates. The psykers especially. They were dying in screaming agony.
A Tyranid trick?
No. Clearly not.
Every man on the field looked up instinctively.
They all went still.
A colossal scar had torn open above Baal, no, not just above Baal. It cut across the entire galaxy.
The Great Rift.
By the time Dante understood what he was looking at, it was already too late. Frenzied Warp energy poured through the tear and twisted the space-time of the Baal System. The opening of the Great Rift shattered the Hive Mind. Its Warp-shadow was blown apart, and the Hive Mind released a shriek so terrible that only psykers could hear it. Hive fleet vessels broke apart across the void.
But the same force tore through the Angel's sons. Under the Warp's influence, they grew violent. The bloodthirst and the battle-hunger clawed at the edges of their control.
[The Blood God's servant, Ka'Bandha, shall descend.]
Dante remembered the prophecy. Chief Librarian Mephiston had spoken those words before leaving the war early. At the very start of the battle, Mephiston had taken the most powerful Librarians from the successor Chapters to a secret location, attempting to seal the path of the Bloodthirster's arrival.
It had clearly failed. The Great Rift had seen to that.
Ka'Bandha was coming.
As if on cue, a fireball tore free from the scar in the sky and screamed downward.
Aimed directly at Baal Secundus.
-------------
"The Thunderhawk is already en route to your position, Chapter Master! Please hold on a little longer!"
"Hold on! I've held on long enough! The Blood Knights and I have been bled dry in this fortress! Move it!"
Seth roared into the comm and drove a killing punch into the Gargoyle locked in his grip.
Every surviving force on Baal Secundus had pulled back to Vigil Keep. Wave after wave of Tyranids crashed against them. The armored vehicles were gone. The heavy cannons were rubble. What remained on the field were a few hundred Dreadnoughts and Astartes, fighting with whatever close-combat weapons they still had, hacking, slashing, holding by sheer will. They were nearly out of ammunition. The defensive perimeter was contracting, falling back toward the high tower.
"By the Sacred Blood! Warriors! Follow me! Back to Baal! Back to Baal!"
The Flesh Tearers' Chapter Master's voice cut through every comm-channel.
Some of the mortal militiamen broke and ran. Others held their posts until the very last moment. At this hour, no one would remember which was which.
When the survivors reached the tower platform, someone's arm shot up, pointing at the sky.
"My lord! Look!"
Seth looked.
A Great Rift like a cursed wound split the heavens, and a fireball was falling from it.
The fireball hit. The surrounding space warped from the impact. When Seth and the other Astartes saw clearly what had landed, their teeth ground together.
"A daemon."
"THE BLOODTHIRSTER KA'BANDHA IS HERE! SONS OF SANGUINIUS — FACE ME!"
Ka'Bandha's roar shook the ground the moment he landed. He swept his blood-axe and whip through the Tyranids around him, reaping them with contemptuous ease. He despised them, and he made no secret of it.
Warp daemons and Tyranids have never gotten along. The conflict runs deep. Daemons feed on the souls and emotions of sentient beings. Tyranids feed on their biomass. Tyranids have no souls, so killing them earns daemons nothing. Daemons have no physical bodies, so Tyranids can't reclaim their corpses for the Hive. Most of the time, the two sides prefer to stay out of each other's way.
This was not most of the time.
Ka'Bandha: Fear not, nephews! Your uncle has come to save you! You belong to your uncle!
Tyranids: Bullshit! Keep your filthy hands off our food!
The two sides tore into each other. But Ka'Bandha had not come alone. The moment he descended, Khorne's domain began spreading across Baal Secundus. Empowered by the Warp, brass fortresses erupted from the ground. Khorne's daemon legions crossed the veil and poured into realspace, throwing themselves at the Tyranids in their thousands.
None of this made things easier for the surviving Sons of Sanguinius.
The Black Rage and the Red Thirst surged. Chapter Master Seth could feel the blood hammering against the inside of his skull. He reached down and raised the relic at his belt.
"To me!"
"TO ME, SONS OF SANGUINIUS!"
They fought it down, the bloodlust, the battle-hunger, and pressed close to the relic in their Chapter Master's hand.
Six Thunderhawk transports arrived. Five broke off to strafe the surrounding Tyranids and daemons. The sixth came down hard.
"Chapter Master! We have to go!"
"I know!"
Seth called for the surviving warriors to board. Then he looked toward Yore and the Blood Knights.
They hadn't moved.
Yore turned his head.
"Sorry, Seth."
A pause.
"I have to stay."
Seth knew. Yore and his Blood Knights had already crossed the line.
Yore's once-handsome face had twisted beyond any generous definition of human. His muscles bunched tight beneath his skin. His eyes had gone yellow. Elongated fangs pushed through his gums and forced his lips back, stretching them taut with pain.
"GO!"
The sound that came out of him was not a human voice. It was the sound a ghoul makes.
"Fine."
No hesitation. Seth led the remaining men aboard and left.
Watching the Thunderhawk squadron climb away, a single tear ran down Yore's twisted face. Then he laughed — wild, unrestrained, and his battle-brothers laughed with him.
At last.
At last they could fight without chains.
"FOR SANGUINIUS!"
The Blood Knights hit the daemons and Tyranids outside the fortress like a crimson whirlwind.
They walked into hell.
Did they regret it?
No.
Not boarding the transport and leaving. Not being Sons of Sanguinius. Not dying in battle.
None of it.
Thousands of daemons and Tyranids were already tearing each other apart. The Blood Knights' arrival drove the slaughter to its peak.
On the Brass Throne, the Blood God watched with satisfaction. He let out a laugh that shook the heavens.
"Say it. Say it, sons of the Angel. Blood for the Blood God. Skulls for the Skull Throne. Say the words, and I will give you endless war and endless strength."
Blood roared through every Blood Knight's veins. They had cast aside everything. One thought remained.
Kill.
Kill every enemy in front of them.
In the name of the Great Angel Sanguinius, kill them all.
But there were too few of them.
Every minute, another valiant warrior fell.
In the end, only Yore and a handful of Blood Knights were left standing.
And the enemy in front of them was Ka'Bandha.
They looked up at the towering, hideous, monstrous Bloodthirster.
They roared.
They charged.
Not because of the Red Thirst. Not because of the Black Rage.
[Warriors of Baal! Let us cast off the Red Thirst one last time, and ride the wings of wrath into battle, as our gene-father did!]
[For the Emperor! For Sanguinius!]
[There is no more beauty left in life. So let us find a beautiful death.]
Dante's words. Spoken before the battle began, to every warrior who would listen.
Yore heard them again now, running.
The wildness faded from his eyes. What replaced it was clear and absolute.
"To hell with your Blood God! I won't bow to you, and you will never enslave me!"
He raised his broken chainsword and screamed at the sky: "WE ARE WORTHY OF SANGUINIUS'S BLOOD!"
"WORTHY OF SANGUINIUS!"
The last Blood Knights broke free. Not beasts. Not thralls. Sons of the Great Angel, every one of them, and they would die as Astartes.
They leaped.
Ka'Bandha's axe came down, an axe that could split mountains, trailing a gale of blood and ruin, and they flew straight into it.
Shadow swallowed the sky above them. A hot tear slid from the corner of Yore's eye. He asked one question, silently, in his heart.
Father. Would you be proud of us?
Time stopped.
In the void, a voice reached him, gentle beyond measure, yet carrying the weight of infinite authority. It detonated softly in the deepest part of his mind.
Always, my son. Always.
BOOM——!
Before Yore could draw another breath, a light more blinding than the sun came screaming down from above and slammed into Ka'Bandha's skull with the force of a falling star.
The shockwave hurled every daemon and every bug from the field.
At the center of the battlefield, a pair of flawless white wings snapped open.
The Great Angel Sanguinius descended like a god made flesh. He raised one boot and drove it squarely into Ka'Bandha's hideous face and sent the Bloodthirster, axe and all, rocketing backward like a cannonball for hundreds of meters.
On the Brass Throne, the Blood God Khorne, who had been savoring every moment of the slaughter, made a sound he had never made before in all his existence.
Confusion.
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(A note for readers who find the timing strange, how did the Great Angel arrive so quickly after the Great Rift opened? The Warp is the answer. It twisted the space-time of the Baal System entirely. What feels like a day or two subjectively may have been a year or two in reality. This isn't creative license, the official lore states this outright, and the animated short Plague Song confirms that time in the Warp is non-linear.)
➤ Next: Kabanda: Holy Shit, Primarchs! Two of Them!!
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