cliffhanger

	The group sped up, moving as fast as the Terminators allowed.  The long corridor warped underfoot, whether from the planet-shaking impact of the Nova or the influence of Chaos, but the tracks of the Rapier handled it well enough.

	Koell’s vox buzzed.  “Master Apothecary, this is Lord Doreth,” the Master of the Armoury said.  “We have you on proximity sensors.  My team is converging on yours.  Acknowledge.”

	“Koell here.  We read you, Doreth,” Koell said.  “Time to contact?”

	“Two minutes.  My team encountered resistance.”

	“Likewise.  Brother Eli is already back on the ship.”  Koell hustled his team down the long corridor, pausing only long enough to kill a few overzealous Glasians who tumbled from a side corridor, waving knives.  Before long, a hatch swung down and clanked onto the floor ahead of the team.  A Techmarine in artificer armor, trailed by a pair of Terminators with Chainfists and Storm Bolters, emerged from the hatchway.

	“Master Koell,” Doreth said with a respectful nod.  “The aliens reel from the Gargantuan.”

	“Indeed, Jeremy strikes true,” the Master Apothecary said.  He hefted his bolter and gestured down the hall.  “We press on, then.  Have you encountered anything unusual?”

	“Not yet.  By Chaotic standards, anyway,” Doreth said.  He swept the corridor with his multimelta and gestured for the other two Terminators to advance before him.  “Onwards.”  Santoru’s Cognomen-pattern Siege Dreadnought led the way, hosing down aliens with fire and bullets.

	Abruptly, the deck shook under the marching Marines’ feet.  Santoru wobbled for a moment before his automatic gyros stabilized him.  All of the Blue Daggers looked around, but nothing had changed.

	“What was that?  Did Haskell fire again?” Koell demanded.

	“Master Koell!  We’re getting a maximum-priority message blast from the Gargantuan!” one of the Terminators broke in.  “They have detected an astronomical anomaly beyond the edge of the system!”

	Koell looked over at the Terminator.  “It’s… massive, whatever it is,” the Terminator said quietly.  “It is yet unknown.”


	Chaplain Gregorius brought the pommel of his Crozius up into the chin of a screeching alien.  He pulped it, then sidestepped the toxic substance that spewed from the gap.  A burst of bolts from a Blue Dagger Centurion shredded the next two in line.

	“I begin to see the difficulty in putting such beings down for good,” Jergal remarked impassively.  The Techmarine was down to his pistol now, and both his Rapier and his plasma-combi bolter were dry.  The Thunderhawk was on its way with more ammunition again, but the sky battle was actually growing worse.  There was no estimated time of arrival.

	The desalination plant’s upper levels were aflame.  Glasian ships had hit it hard, and the Septiim Defender PDF were reeling.

	Holgein had set his massive rifle aside.  At this range, it was a waste.  The old Wolf was a whirlwind of knives and pistol shots.  He and Ly’tren were holding the shattered front door of the building.  Thousands of alien corpses lay sprawled over the ferrocrete all around them, and a few hundred humans beside them.  Holgein howled in rage as he grabbed one Glasian and simply ripped it apart.  He flung the remains into the pressing herd and fired his pistol into another.  Ly’tren had slung his multimelta, and his two bolters now did the work.  Despite the endurance his gene-line bestowed upon him, he could feel the faint sting of lactic acid buildup in his muscles – he was tired.

	Apparently Asvar wasn’t.  The dexterous Raven Apothecary was darting around the defense lines of the PDF, tending to the wounded Blue Daggers who had joined the desperate battle.  Dozens of Glasian ships, mostly fighters, but with a few transports among them, were still descending towards the atmosphere.  The Glasians were using their landed transports as firebases now, and there were nearly a hundred scattered around the city.  The Septiim Defender PDF were holding, but if the Glasians in orbit weren’t broken soon, things would run out of hand.

	Asvar hauled back a punch and drove it into the stomach of one Glasian trooper that had vaulted the sandbags.  The Glasian broke at the middle, showering the sandbags with tainted gore.  Asvar shoved his Power Sword into the next one over, and it fell back aflame.

	“There’s no end to them!” one Guardsman wailed.  He scrambled to his knees, covered in the remains of a squadmate.  “They’ll not stop til all men are dead!”

	His Commissar slapped the offending solder across the eyes, and the faintheart fell back, stunned.  “On your feet, soldier!” the Commissar snarled.  “We’re not dead yet!”

	Calrus ignored the melodrama and loaded his last belt of heavy shells into his bolter.  He had… two hundred fifty six bolts left, of a mixture of ammo types, including High Explosive.  If he didn’t get his reload soon, it wouldn’t matter which type he was using.

	Another transport soared by underhead.  The paint and metal of its belly warped as PDF troops on nearby rooftops fired up into its undercarriage, but it stil made it down.  Side hatches clanged down, and hundreds more Glasians charged madly into the fray.

	Two Leman Russ Conquerors rumbled out of a side alley to engage.  The tanks had the typical Septiim loadout of three heavy bolters and two storm bolters, plus their cannon.  Both vehicles opened up on the landed transport’s troops, laying down a thick curtain of bolts.  The Glasiasn infantry’s first wave dissolved in the storm of bolts, but two laser blasts from the transport slagged one tank, which splashed fuel on the other, setting it aflame.  A pair of Guardsmen emerged from one hatch and began hurriedly extinguishing the flames.

	A Blue Dagger Tactical Marine beside Jergal sighted the weapons blister with his missile launcher and fired.  The lascannon blister blackened from the impact and detonation, but remained intact.  It pivoted its gun and impaled the Dagger with a laser blast, and Jergal looked away from the sight of the Marine being vaporized from the waist up.  Asvar saw the Tactical brother fall and cursed.  “The damn transports are armed like a Stormbird,” he said grimly.

	“I know, but just keep holding the line, brother, the rest of the Daggers and the Guard are on the way,” Ly’tren said.  He fired the last few Kraken rounds from his bolter into the regrouping Glasians, and the gun clanked empty.  He lumbered back to the PDF line as Holgein covered his withdrawal.

	Gregorius twisted an alien’s head off and threw it like a ball at the Glasian herd.  As one, they charged the Chaplain where he stood defiant beyond the sandbagged line, his Conversion Field sparking.  “Come, beasts,” he hissed.  He leveled his pistol and started shooting into the mass of blue aliens.

	Jergal finished loading the last few shells he had into the Rapier and pivoted it.  At the last moment, his eyes widened as he saw the laser on the transport jerk over to point at him.  He threw himself aside as a beam cooked past where he had been standing.  He heard the rattling explosion of detonating ammunition as the beam hit his precious Rapier.

	“Accursed xeno scum!” he snarled as he crawled away under the sandbags.  “Gregorius, they got the Rapier.”

	The Chaplain’s jaw tightened.  “Move to better cover.  Daggers, one of you kindly destroy that damn laser!”

	“Working on it,” a new voice put in.  A moment later, two more missiles streaked out from the burning desalination plant to smear the lascannon blister into scrap.  “Target neutralized.  Reloading.”

	A Glasian hovertank suddenly dropped ballistic to the ground and exploded.  Gregorius watched arcs of lightning spew from the hands of an Electro-Priest by the Guard lines and catch another, singeing its grav-plates.

	The glittering red and grey of an incoming Imperial aircraft emerged from the roiling battle overhead.  Gregorius saw it blink black twice on his helmet display – a Deathwatch ship.  Two more darts followed in its wake, the same color.

	A column of light transfixed the Glasian transport, followed by a precision strike from six Hellstrikes.  The transport exploded down the middle, scattering debris and burning aliens everywhere.  A Thunderhawk gunship dropped past the smoke and dove down towards the fight on the ground.  Its turbolaser fired again, skewering a Glasian tank and sending it into the water.  The Thunderhawk soared down behind the Imperial lines and rotated to face the enemy.

	Jergal was at the ramp before it finished lowering.  Four serfs with slung SMGs charged out, each pulling a lead on a grav-sled.  Jergal reached out and pushed his wrecked Rapier into the Thunderhawk, where a Techpriest was waiting.  “We did not hear that your machine had been desecrated, Techmarine,” the Techpriest droned.

	“It just happened,” Jergal said angrily.  He grabbed fresh magazines off the grav-sled and dropped empty ones back on.  “I’m loaded.  Go.”  He leaped back as the serfs pushed the grav-sled back into the gunship and swung the door closed.

	Asvar hurled a grenade at the charging bird beasts.  It went off in the middle of a pack, scattering them and killing most.  A burst of explosive shells from a Storm Bolter somewhere overhead finished off the rest.  He took a quick look over the killing field as he moved back to the line.  Things were not clearing, but the covering fire from the main building was intensifying quickly.  More Guard must have arrived.

	As he registered that, however, something caught his ear.  The buzz of Glasian hovertanks was not lessening, but the weapons fire of their corkscrew guns and Ruin weaponry had.  Asvar risked a quick look over at them as he ran, and his eyes widened.  They had stopped shooting.  All of them.  The Guard had stopped, too, he couldn’t hear the distinctive *click-buzz* of lasrifles.

	Asvar slowed to a halt and looked around.  Everybody was looking up.  The Guard, Jergal, even Gregorius, whose hood had fallen back.  Asvar looked upwards too.

	Overhead, with no ceremony or sound at all, the sky was turning bright red.  Far beyond the sky, in the depths of space, a line was appearing.  It was an ugly line, ragged and glowing with malevolent un-light.  It spread and spread and spread until it wrapped around the sky from one side to the other, swallowing the horizons.  In seconds, there was a crack in the world above, where previously there had been nothing at all.

	“What is this?” Ly’tren whispered.  His hearts were hammering in his chest.

	“I… do not know,” Gregorius said softly.

	Behind them, the screaming started.

To Be Continued