Soot rained from Oadou’s burning skies onto Tahrk’s bone and black armour. The Tauran marine scowled beneath his helm at the far-off screams of traitorous voidcraft as they tore through the lower atmosphere.
The manufactory world had been under siege for months now, and while the local militia and their Astartes saviours had fought valiantly, the planet’s defenses had finally collapsed, giving way to a blasphemous tide of heretics.
As he surveyed the horizon, replete with razed manufactura and the advancing warhost, Tahrk growled, ‘The Emperor will deliver His wrath yet, even if He must use a single Astartes, a dozen guardsmen, and’, surveying the vacuous magazine of his sidearm, ‘a single boltround.’
‘Commsman,’ he called to the frightened mass of guardsmen huddled behind him, ‘radio survivors. Instruct all unjammed frequencies to rendezvous at Altauku Starport for escape offworld. There is vital materiel there that cannot be allowed to fall into the clutches of the archenemy.’
‘Yes, my lord,’ responded one beleaguered man, his shaking arms streaked in grease from his barely functional communication array, ‘but won’t the enemy be listening? And won’t survivors need to wade through miles of ‘em?’
‘Leave that to me,’ Tahrk interposed, patting the power axe mag-locked to his thigh. ‘Withdraw to Altauku and begin loading ordnance. Prioritise those with the greatest yield.’
With his plan catalysed, now all that remained was to buy the guard time.
Tahrk roared through the streets, throwing himself upon the hated foe with zealous abandon. He was a blur of steel and ceramite, wheeling through the melee, dodging past any attack which threatened his armour, and rewarding each craven attempt with fervent retribution.
The marine dove into platoons of execrable cultists, hacking down droves in furious flurries of blows, his axe a blinding streak as it cleaved through bodies, tides of foul blood following its backswing like surf against a rocky shore.
He wrenched profane standards from the wretches’ grasps, and transfixed dozens upon their barbed hafts, until eventually, none remained in reach. The throng had been broken, and its distraught remnants fled into the environs, wailing, cursing the Emperor and their own false gods in equal measure.
Even as they retreated, the mass of foes began to re-form like the gathering backwash of a wave, bolstered by a contingent of heretic Astartes: more of Kurze’s wicked brood.
‘Finally,’ Tahrk snarled, flicking the blood from his axe, ‘I was beginning to wonder when this might become a challenge.’
His wanting ammunition precluded him from challenging the enemies’ firing lines, forcing him to draw the vile swarm deeper into the tight quarters and rumbling enginery of the assembly lines. Belts and heavy tools whirred onwards as faithful servitors, utterly oblivious of the devastation around them, continued their duties before being cut down by Tahrk’s maddened pursuers.
The Night Lords harried him too, bursting from the innumerable shadows of the factory with incensed laughter as their lightning claws sparked to life. The Tauran continued his hurried withdrawal, cautious not to overcommit as he weaved through the dense machinery.
As he neared Altauku, Tahrk lent more power to his helmet’s audio-filters, trying to isolate the far-off sounds of the guardsmen’s progress. His sensors picked up the cacophony of mobilised equipment, the starport’s functions stirring indolently back to life, and the infrequent bark of lasgun fire.
Good, he thought, the plan is coming together.
Tahrk’s sensors chirped, and the marine was shaken from his brief reverie by the sudden, blasting roar of an approaching jump pack propelling a ferocious Warp Talon as the traitor burst from the Immaterium.
The son of Kurze was a flash of lightning, and only Tahrk’s instincts shielded him from a fatal blow, dodging low as his adversary’s bladed claws carved deep gashes through the rockcrete upon which he had just rested.
‘Hello, Cousin,’ the Night Lord cackled as he hovered nearby, taking obvious glee in Tahrk’s sloppy dodge.
‘Spare me your perverse gibbering, Apostate. All your craven pride, and yet I still stand unscathed!’
‘I have butchered dozens of your kin on this world alone, Astartes. You draw breath only as I find your frightened scampering slightly more amusing than your mangled corpse.’
‘Then come, Traitor, and show me what passes for terror among your heathenous ranks.’
The starport’s cranes wheeled sluggishly overhead, carrying munitions to elevated loading docks as Tahrk limped into the installation. His Larraman worked to stem the bleeding from his stumped left arm, a result of a rushed parry. While his mission was nearly at an end, his confident demeanor did little to obscure that he was hopelessly outmatched by the Warp Talon, even as the heretic toyed with him. He could only press deeper into the facility, as crazed laughter echoed from every direction.
The ghoulish Warp Talon materialised on the end of a battered catwalk above him, lording his presence over the barely functional factory floor, and the lone marine his swarming host had cornered inside it.
With his remaining hand, Tahrk defiantly drew his boltgun, levelling it towards their unflinching leader, who needn’t know he was bluffing more than a single round.
‘I would commend your valiance, Cousin, but you must know your efforts have all been for naught. Escape is impossible, our fleet has been blockading this system for months now. There is no one coming for you.’
‘Undoubtedly.’
A manic smile spread across the already stretched face of the Night Lord.
‘Ah, how terrible,’ he jeered with mock sympathy, ‘then you have seen your own death coming for weeks now!’
Tahrk allowed himself a short, uncharacteristic chuckle before countering, ‘Better than it taking you by surprise.’
With that, he raised his extended arm and fired once at the overhead crane. A mechanism shattered, and chains began unspooling quickly from each end, dropping the payload the guardsmen had been hard at work loading.
The Infernus Pattern Pyroclastic warhead, with enough yield to reduce this hemisphere to a roiling waste, torpedoed towards the factory floor as Tahrk grinned.
