V3 Chapter 77: The Possessed, the Exalted Eightbound
Duvette decided he might have overestimated the World Eaters who'd come aboard to attack them.
When they'd first come aboard the Macragge's Honour, they had indeed scattered exactly as Duvette had first predicted, trying to sabotage the ship's power conduits, communication nodes, and transit routes. But the moment armed ratings engaged them, the fury of the Butcher's Nails swiftly overwhelmed whatever judgement they had left.
These World Eaters would abandon whatever they'd been doing on the spot and charge straight at the nearest enemy.
Strategy was thrown out the window entirely.
All that remained was the desire to kill.
Naturally, Duvette had no intention of letting that go to waste.
Great numbers of armed ratings volunteered for bait teams, falling back and fighting along pre-planned routes to draw the scattered World Eaters into designated compartments. The operation still cost some casualties, but more and more of the boarders were being carved apart by airlocks and heavy isolation gates.
Harath Shen, Captain of the Salamanders Fourth Company, led his warriors in holding a critical equipment sector.
Tiberius Malkarion, Captain of the Novamarines First Company, sealed off the main transit corridors, while Cassian Villanos, Captain of the Blood Angels Fifth Company, led his men in rapid-response support. Under Duvette's orders, three hundred Astartes moved in waves into designated kill zones, gradually surrounding the maddened World Eaters.
The fighting continued, but the situation had already fallen firmly under Duvette's control.
He himself no longer remained in the strategic command room.
Evan and the staff still handled the summary of ground reports, and Huron could hold Badab Prime's lines on his own. Duvette, meanwhile, took the thirteen Shadow Wolves of Luna with him to the last unengaged combat site aboard the ship.
A Legion landing marshalling deck.
This deck had once been used to marshal the Ultramarines Legion's large-scale landing forces; its broad expanse was laced with multiple armoured transport rails. Several heavy lift platforms led down to the main hangar below, and a scattering of armoured vehicles, not yet brought into service, stood parked around its edges.
A World Eaters boarding party was closing in on it.
The ratings assigned to lure them had done exactly as ordered, drawing them here down several passages. The trail of blood and death left behind was more than enough to keep the Nails-tormented berserkers in furious pursuit.
Duvette stood behind the towering backs of Markus and the others, his power sword drawn but its disruption field not yet active.
He drew the pocket watch he always carried from inside his uniform.
The hands moved slowly.
Duvette watched it in silence, until the second hand swept past the mark he'd set.
A savage roar echoed from the distant passage.
Right behind it came the shouts of armed ratings, and the answering crack of shotgun fire. The whine of spinning chain-weapons drew steadily closer, heavy footsteps beginning to shake the deck.
Duvette closed the watch and slipped it back into his coat.
He reached out and clapped Markus on the arm plate.
"Deal with them."
Markus said nothing.
He only gave a small nod, then thumbed the switch on his power sword. The disruption field sprang to life across the blade at once, and he raised his storm shield steady before him.
Markus stepped forward with heavy, deliberate strides.
The other twelve Shadow Wolves of Luna followed close behind, forming a line of white across the centre of the wide deck.
Dozens of armed ratings soon burst out from the dark passage.
They looked utterly spent, some with blood still smeared across their uniforms and armour. At the sight of the white-armoured giants ahead, they finally let out a breath of relief.
The ratings passed through the gap the Shadow Wolves had left open for them, then reformed behind the line. Gasping for breath, they turned and levelled their shotguns and autoguns back at the darkness behind them.
A hail of fire tore into the passage once more.
A furious roar answered them at once.
The next instant, a spinning axe hurtled out of the darkness, aimed straight at a rating in the middle of reloading.
Markus surged forward.
His storm shield smashed forward, knocking the whirling weapon aside. The axe struck the shield face with a thunderous crash, then spun off to one side and buried itself deep in the armoured deck.
"Go."
Markus's voice came from behind his helm.
"Leave this to us."
The ratings fell back quickly, reforming a line near Duvette.
Sixteen World Eaters stepped out from the shadows of the passage.
Eight of them still held roughly the shape of Astartes. They wore scarred, dark red power armour, gripping chain-axes, power swords, and bolt pistols, their plate still marked with damage from the ship's earlier defenders.
The other eight could scarcely still be called ordinary Astartes at all.
Duvette looked at the twisted flesh before him and could more or less guess what they were.
The Possessed.
The Eightbound.
Each Eightbound had eight Khornate daemons bound within its body and soul. The host held them down through sheer force of will, drawing on their strength even as its own flesh warped and changed under the strain.
For an ordinary Astartes to deal with one safely required numbers and coordination both.
And the strongest among the Eightbound would master those daemons completely, bending all eight streams of power fully to their own will.
Such a monster was known as an Exalted Eightbound.
Even the Imperium's mightiest warriors had reason to take one seriously.
Seven ordinary Eightbound stood among the World Eater veterans, low sounds rumbling from their throats. Their bodies twitched without pause, as though they might lunge forward at any instant.
Dark red armour plating covered only their shoulders and legs, thick muscle bulging out through cracked breastplates. Cabling from the Butcher's Nails ran down along their spines and into their flesh, and each of them carried a chain blade large enough for an ordinary Space Marine to need both hands.
The one at the front stood taller still.
Its head twitched without rest, several different growls issuing in turn from its throat. Its right arm had already fused with a massive chainsaw structure, the teeth still slick with fresh blood.
The Exalted Eightbound.
It fixed its eyes on Markus and let out a roar.
Its massive body lunged forward.
The rest of the World Eaters attacked at the same instant.
Markus took the Exalted Eightbound's first charge head-on with his storm shield raised. A thunderous crash rang out across the deck, the shield's face torn with deep gouges from the fused chain blade, but his feet only slid back half a step.
The twelve Shadow Wolves of Luna spread out at once.
Four met the eight ordinary World Eaters head-on, while the rest fanned out along the flanks. Bolt pistols cracked in short, precise bursts, concentrated fire landing on helm-lenses and armour joints.
One World Eater had barely raised his chain-axe before his knee joint took a string of hits and gave way.
He lost his balance and fell, and a Shadow Wolf ran him through the chest with a power sword. Another berserker tried to hit the line from the flank, only to be caught between two of the white-armoured veterans in turn; a storm shield knocked his weapon aside, and a power sword took his head off a moment later.
The eight ordinary World Eaters kept attacking, driven purely by rage.
But the Shadow Wolves gave them no chance to build any real momentum.
Coordination between these thirteen ten-thousand-year veterans needed almost no words at all. Whenever one blocked a strike, another's blade came in from the side; whenever a World Eater tried to press an advantage, the wall of shields closed in around him, trapping him in a narrow pocket.
In no time at all, the eight ordinary World Eaters fell, one after another.
By then, the seven Eightbound had already crashed into the line.
Their strength far exceeded any ordinary Astartes; their massive chain blades could tear through an armoured vehicle without effort. One Shadow Wolf caught a blow on his shield, and the force-feedback system running the length of his arm immediately flagged an overload warning.
He gave ground deliberately, drawing the Eightbound off to one side.
Two more warriors closed in at once, one carving open the flesh behind the creature's knee with a power sword, the other driving a blade into its exposed belly. The Eightbound let out a roar of several voices layered together, and swung its chain blade around, only to be blocked by a storm shield raised in time.
More of the Shadow Wolves fell into coordinated rhythm.
They never traded raw strength with the Eightbound directly; every strike was concentrated on a single target at a time. Shields restricted movement while power weapons kept cutting into exposed flesh and warped joints.
The Eightbound's bodies were incredibly resilient.
Even with an arm severed, they kept biting and slamming forward. One Shadow Wolf was knocked back several metres, a corner of his shoulder plate shaved clean off by a chain blade, but he rejoined the line before long.
Duvette stood behind the fighting, watching every shift in the battle through his strategic overlay.
"Left flank."
He spoke suddenly.
Two Shadow Wolves shifted position at once.
An Eightbound trying to circle around behind a cargo vehicle had barely emerged before it was struck by two storm shields at once. In the instant its balance broke, three power swords drove into its body from three different directions.
One by one, the seven Eightbound fell.
In the end, only the Exalted Eightbound still stood, locked in combat with Markus.
Its fused chainsaw arm hammered against the storm shield again and again, tearing a crack across its face that had nearly gone all the way through. Markus held his defensive stance without pause, keeping the creature's full attention fixed on himself.
Two Shadow Wolves closed in from the flank and rear.
The Exalted Eightbound sensed the threat and spun, swinging its chainsaw arm, only to be knocked back once more by Markus's shield.
"Now."
Three power weapons fell almost as one.
One severed its left leg.
A second drove through its waist.
Markus's own power sword drove up from below into the creature's chest, its disruption field tearing through flesh and bone alike, exiting out through the shoulder.
The Exalted Eightbound was still roaring.
Markus withdrew the blade, then swept it across in a single stroke.
The creature's head flew off, landing some distance away.
Its massive body crashed down hard onto the deck.
The fight was over.
The thirteen Shadow Wolves of Luna reformed their line; not one of them had been taken out of the fight. Some of their power armour had taken damage, and the storm shield in Markus's hand was all but ruined, but their formation held complete.
Duvette looked at Markus, drenched in the enemy's blood, and had just opened his mouth to say something.
When a wave of inexplicable rage suddenly rose up from somewhere deep inside him.
Nearby, armed ratings began gripping their weapons tight, and several Shadow Wolves turned their heads toward the comrades beside them at the very same moment. The fury had come far too suddenly, as though some will were forcing everyone present toward slaughtering one another.
Duvette activated [Iron Crusade] at once.
A cold, unyielding power spread out fast.
The fury that had just surfaced was forced back down, and everyone present had their morale and reason locked back at their highest state. The ratings' fingers, which had almost closed on their triggers, relaxed, and the Shadow Wolves settled back into calm.
Just then, another dull, heavy boom rolled through the entire Macragge's Honour.
The deck lurched hard.
The tremor this time was even stronger than the impact of the Beast Claws striking the hull. Cracks began spreading through the bulkheads in the distance, and great sheets of dust rained down from above.
Duvette pulled up his strategic map at once.
A massive marker had appeared in another heavy cargo transfer hall elsewhere aboard the Macragge's Honour.
Its red had deepened almost to black.
The marker's size dwarfed anything an ordinary Astartes would register, its presence overriding every friend-or-foe signal around it.
Tiberius Malkarion's furious voice broke over the vox.
"Hold the line!"
"Novamarines, on me!"
The roar of storm bolters carried across the channel, followed at once by the sound of metal being torn apart.
Duvette looked back at the strategic map.
The green markers representing the Novamarines' Terminator veterans were vanishing fast.
One.
Two.
More green points blinked out in the span of a few seconds.
These battle-hardened veterans, clad in Terminator armour and forged through countless wars, were dying at a horrifying rate.
Duvette's expression darkened by degrees.
A name surfaced instantly in his mind.
He's here.