children.
They were all going to die, he realised.
Kol Badar raised an eyebrow within his fully enclosed helm as he saw the soldiers running towards him, an officer at their forefront brandishing a roaring chain blade. The towering warlord didn't even bother to raise his combi-bolter, and he began stalking towards the fools running at him and his Anointed warriors. Las-rounds thudded uselessly into him as the distance closed. The officer lifted his chainsword high, his face defiant. Kol Badar almost laughed out loud.
The warlord swatted the blade away dismissively with the back of his power-talon, breaking the man's arm in the process, and clubbed the officer down into the ground with a blow from his combi-bolter. He stamped down heavily on the mewling wretch, and the man's skull shattered like a pulverised egg.
The Anointed cleaved into the PDF troopers, ripping limbs from sockets, tearing heads from bodies. The Coryphaus saw Bokkar drive his chainfist into the body of the diminutive PDF standard bearer, lifting him up into the air before the whirring blades cut the boy in half. The Anointed warrior turned his heavy flamer on the fallen standard, the fabric consumed instantly under the intense heat.
Las-fire sprayed across his back, and he hissed in pain and anger as one of the beams caught him in the back of his knee-joint. He turned and gunned down one of the PDF troopers before they disappeared beneath an inferno of flames, screaming horribly. Kol Badar nodded his head towards the Anointed warrior Bokkar, who acknowledged the Coryphaus with a nod of his own, before his heavy flamer roared again, engulfing another group of soldiers.
Heavy footsteps made the ground tremble, and Kol Badar turned towards the huge form of the Warmonger, the Dreadnought dwarfing even him as it walked through the carnage, potent cannons pumping fire towards enemy vehicles in the distance.
'It is good to crush the enemy on the field of war once more, but this is no battle, Kol Badar,' the ancient war machine boomed. There were few within the Host that would dare call the warlord by his name, but the Warmonger was amongst them. They had fought at each other's sides for millennia. Indeed, Kol Badar had been the Warmonger's Coryphaus when the warrior had been Dark Apostle.
'The enemy is weak,' agreed Kol Badar. 'How I yearn to face a worthy foe,' he added, turning his gaze up into the void of the heavens.
'You think Astartes will come?' boomed the Warmonger hungrily.
'No, I think not,' sighed Kol Badar. 'As much as I wish to face them once more. The Dark Apostle has said that in none of his dream-visions did he see any Astartes come to this world to do battle with us.'
'But minions of the Corpse Emperor will come, will they not? They will come to do battle?'
'Oh, they will come, my friend. They will be marshalling their forces even now.'
'But not Astartes?'
'No, not Astartes.'
'Bah,' snorted the Warmonger. 'It will be just mortals then.'
'Yes, mortals,' said Kol Badar, still staring up into the night sky, as if he could pierce the heavens with his angry gaze. 'One can only hope that they will come in force. At least then there may be a worthy battle.'
The Warmonger stomped off, its cannons firing once more. He saw the daemon engines clawing over the bulwark, multi-legged and spitting great gouts of flame from their maws, while others busied themselves tearing apart enemy tanks with contemptuous ease.
Kol Badar began to follow the Warmonger, to rejoin the battle once again. No, he reminded himself, this was not battle. This was a slaughter.
Varnus coughed, causing a searing, sharp pain in his side. Smoke was all around him, and bodies. No, not just bodies: body
The blast had ripped through the palace, and smoke and dust rose from piles of rubble. The walls were blackened in part, and ancient wall hangings were ablaze. Many of the bloody bodies strewn around him were also on fire, and the stink of burning flesh and fat almost made him retch. Varnus coughed painfully and he felt the floor beneath his feet shake as another blast somewhere else in the palace detonated.
The sound of shouting reached him, and he staggered towards it, away from the inferno that was blazing behind him. A trio of palace guards ran past along an adjoining corridor, and he hurried along in their wake. He felt another explosion rock the floor beneath his feet and increased his pace, wincing against the pain. He had to get out of this part of the palace.
Staggering along through the smoke that seemed to be thickening around him, he followed the direction that he thought the guards had taken. He limped through a half open door, entering a service corridor usually closed to those frequenting the palace. He passed a palace guard lying dead on the ground, a gunshot wound in the man's head. He leant down and picked up the guard's long-barrelled las-lock. It was heavy and unwieldy in his hands, but it was a weapon none-the-less.
Rounding a corner, Varnus saw a pair of palace guards standing over a fallen man. He wore a plain, cream coloured robe, identical to any number of anonymous bureaucrats that worked within the palace. Seeing him, the guards shouldered their weapons. Varnus held up his hands.
'I'm an enforcer. What the hell is going on?' Varnus managed.
'Insurgents,' said one of the guards. 'Our commander has called us out onto the upper battlements. You had best come with us, enforcer.'
Varnus nodded his head and hurried along after the guards as best as he could. Through winding passages they passed, through hissing blast doors that their pass-cards gave access to. They climbed a set of steel stairs, and finally passed through a heavy door to emerge upon the high battlements of the palace bastion. The door slammed shut with grim finality behind them.
It was night. No, it was almost dawn, Varnus realised. How long had he been unconscious?
He saw masses of PDF soldiers garrisoned along the battlements and smaller groups of blue-armoured guards. They were rushing all over the bastion, the whole area seething with soldiers. Many were firing over the battlements at unseen foes on one of the multiple lower terraces of the bastion, and streaking lasgun fire answered them. Men crouched behind other sections of the battlements as rocket propelled grenades struck the walls, and they were raked by heavy gunfire. Men were shouting, and with the cacophony of gunfire and explosions, it seemed to Varnus that he had escaped the burning section of the palace only to enter a hell of a different kind.
Pain lanced through his side and Varnus grimaced, holding his hand to the bleeding wound.
'I'm fine,' he wheezed as he saw the guards accompanying him hesitate, caught between aiding him and joining the gun battle.
'Go,' he said, making the decision for them.
Floodlights lit up the battlements as if it were daylight, and Varnus, leaning heavily on his salvaged las-lock, staggered across the open area to take cover below the thick crenellations. He risked a quick glance down towards the sprawling, ugly city.
There was a series of lower terraces below the battlements upon which he stood, but beyond them he could see dozens of fires burning all across Shinar, and he could hear a steady thump of explosions coming from all over the city. From over the horizon, he thought he could see dim flashes.
'Emperor preserve us,' said Varnus quietly as he crouched back down behind the crenellations.
He started as one of the enormous air defence turrets along the battlements suddenly came to life, hydraulic servos whirring as the massive cannons rotated, the barrels angled high. What next? thought Varnus, as more of the turrets rotated their giant cannons heavenward.
The floodlights that lit the whole area flickered suddenly, then died. The lights of the entire palace turned off as the potent plasma reactors beneath it went dead. A fifty-block radius around the palace went black instantly, swiftly followed by the rest of the city. Las-fire and tracer rounds flashed through the darkness.
The air defence turrets went off-line.
