As if on cue, the first ranks of the tech-guard cohort appeared over the edge of the battlements, tracked weaponry rolling forward at their side. They began to fire as they marched resolutely forwards.
The tracked units of the tech-guard unleashed the power of their arcane construction at the Chaos Marines as they backed away. The air crackled with energy as coruscating lightning leapt from humming bronze spheres to strike the foe. The ground was ripped up as bizarre weapons fired, causing great rents to rip along the ground, tossing the enemy into the air. Heavy, quad-barrelled cannons pumped fire into the foe, but the traitors, recognising the new threat, began to target the tracked units of the Mechanicus with missiles and other heavy weapons fire.
Laron's eyes flashed to the timer counting down in the corner of the head-up display in his helmet and he swore. The second wave of drop-troopers was about to be launched and the anti-aircraft fire from the palace had not yet been silenced. The first wave had been devastated and it looked as though the second would face a similar barrage.
Time was running out.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Brigadier-General Havorn cursed as the pict-screen before him flickered, the detailed map-schematic shorting out. The Chimera bumped its occupants about as it rolled across the salt plain in the wake of the tech-guard cohorts. Sweat was dripping down Havorn's face.
Bestial roars and screaming mixed with hissing static blared out of the vox-unit suddenly, replacing the relayed chatter of the senior captains.
'What the hell's all that?' Havorn snarled.
'I don't know, sir, but its been flooding the less powerful voxes for the past hundred metres or so,' replied his adjutant. 'I thought my set-up would be too powerful for it. Damn enemy's jamming our comms somehow.'
'Perfect. Looks like the rest of this war is going to be fought deaf, dumb and blind.'
'Your officers are good men, sir,' replied the man. 'They know their orders.'
'Move us up closer to the front, Kashar. I want to at least be able to see what the hell is going on.'
'Is that wise, brigadier-general? You would be exposing yourself to unnecessary danger.'
'What do you think is going to happen if we lose this battle, Kashar? We lose this battle and we are all dead men. Move us up closer. I want to be able to see the outcome with my own eyes.'
Burias-Drak'shal hacked left and right, smashing the Skitarii out of his way with sweeps of his spiked icon. At the Coryphaus's order he had remounted his Land Raider and led his warriors straight into the massed ranks of the enemy cohorts, meeting them within another of the slowly dispersing cloud walls. The vehicles had ploughed through the enemy ranks, crushing hundreds beneath their heavy tracks.
The Rhinos disabled by the foe were left behind, the warrior-brothers within abandoned to their fate. They would kill many before they fell. It was an honour to die for the Legion.
They had ridden deep into the heart of the enemy formation, until his Land Raider was finally brought to a halt, its hull pierced by countless melta-blasts, its tracks torn and ragged, and its engine reduced to molten metal.
Even then, Burias-Drak'shal refused to be slowed, leading his coterie of warrior-brothers out of the ruined vehicle, roaring and screaming their battle-cries. He pulverised the enemy in his path, shrugging off countless wounds and gunshots that would have killed any other warrior-brother within the Host. The Word Bearers carved a bloody swathe through the Skitarii cohorts, urged ever onwards by the Icon Bearer, following the frenzied warrior deeper into the enemy formation. These were the regular troopers of the Adeptus Mechanicus, indentured warriors who had only minor augmetic enhancements: eye-piece targeters, altered neural pathways, enhanced lungs and such, and they died easily beneath the fury of the possessed warrior and his battle-brothers.
Hissing ichor dripped from his wounds and his armour was cracked and blistering, yet Burias-Drak'shal continued on, ploughing through the enemy, bashing them out of his path. His warriors' chainaxes rose and fell, and bolt pistols blasted as they followed behind him.
Burias-Drak'shal blocked a swinging double-handed axe with the shaft of his icon and grabbed a hovering metallic tentacle attached to the red-robed Tech-Priest's spine, pulling the adept towards him. He leant forwards, snarling as the priest stumbled, and ripped out his throat with a bite, tasting putrid oils and blood-replacement fluids in his mouth. Knocking the priest to the ground he continued to ran, impaling a gun-servitor upon the point of the icon and hurling it into the air as its heavy bolter armament ripped chunks out of his shoulder pad.
He saw armoured personnel carriers through the press of bodies up ahead and roared as he sensed that the prey was close, sprinting on with renewed vigour. With a flick of his talons he decapitated another foe, and smashed another out of his way with the return blow, a brutal backhand swing that almost ripped the head of another Skitarii from its shoulders.
The fighting between the first and second tier was brutal and bloody. The daemon engines of the Word Bearers unleashed countless barrages of warp infused shells into the no man's land, killing thousands. The Skitarii warriors marched in perfect unison into the guns of the Word Bearers protected behind the fortified bulwark of the second embankment and hundreds of them were torn apart by the concentrated fire.
'Ancients of battle,' roared the Warmonger, 'be released from your shackles and kill once more in the name of Lorgar!'
Thirty Dreadnoughts roared and screamed wordlessly, straining against the inscribed chains that bound them. The chains were suddenly released and the bloodthirsty machines, all semblance of their sanity having long abandoned them, were unleashed on the enemy as they pushed up the second tier.
They surged over the parapet, their ancient weapons roaring and booming, and they slammed into the enemy, hurling them into the air with great sweeps of their power claws and piston-driven siege hammers. Multi-bladed power gauntlets scythed through the front ranks of the foe, cleaving men and Skitarii in half, and screaming chainfists the length of two men carved down through the bodies of others, throwing blood and chunks of flesh in every direction.
Dreadnoughts stood atop the bulwark, missiles firing from their inbuilt weapon systems, detonating amongst the foe in fiery blasts. One Dreadnought, screaming insanely, turned its rapid firing autocannons upon power armoured warrior-brothers, his ability to distinguish between friend and foe lost in the madness of battle.
The Warmonger strode towards the machine and struck it to the ground with one mighty sweep of its arm. It kicked and screamed madly as it tried to right itself, and the Warmonger unleashed the power of its guns into the sarcophagus casing of the Dreadnought, seeking to put an end to its struggles. Its kicking ceased and its screams became a gurgled hiss. A cadaverous, jawless head could be seen within the cracked sarcophagus, the skull malformed and covered with bony, spiny growths coated in sickly pus.
'You are released from your bondage, warrior-brother,' intoned the Warmonger before it turned its guns once more towards the numberless enemy swarming over the barricade.
'Coryphaus, the smoke-wall is abating. The Ordinatus is come,' said Bokkar.
'What?' growled Kol Badar. 'The Mechanicus would never risk the war machine until its safety was assured.'
'Nevertheless, it is advancing across the salt plain, my lord. It will be in range of the daemon engines within the minute and will be ready to fire upon the palace within ten.'
'A curse upon them! Pull out from combat, Bokkar. Take a Thunderhawk and slow the damned thing down! Get the daemon engines to target it.'
'As you wish, Coryphaus.'
My lord Jarulek,
Jarulek opened his eyes from the deep trance. He sat in the restoration chamber, blinking against the thick, viscous liquid that he was immersed in. His arms were bare, the script-covered, pale and heavily muscled limbs
