Crimson Fury

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

“Do we have a visual?”

“Affirmative. Running checks now.”

“Designation?”

“Genestealers.”

“I want clean kills. None of them are to get close, those claws can shred power armour like paper.”

“Sir! More signals have appeared, directly below us!” Forran spun around to face the ventilation shaft, his armour’s servos supplementing his incredible strength. He fired at the shaft, and was rewarded with a cacophony of shrill shrieks. The body of the dead xenos shot out of the duct and Forran batted it aside, and was confronted with a roaring genestealer, all four claw-tipped arms reaching for him. The alien fell to a hail of bolter shells from Hyte, and Forran thrust his combat blade straight out of its sheath and into the skull of an emerging figure. The tore the blade out, only to see it disintegrate to the acidic blood of the creatures.

“For The Emperor and Sanguinius! Death! DEATH!” The blood angels cried, and launched themselves into repelling the assault. Forran and Hyte laid down a hail of fire, clogging the entrance to the shaft with bodies. Genestealers further down the shaft began tearing their way out of the ventilation shaft, erupting from below the metal floor. Kyrech and Gavla spat out a withering rain of shells at the oncoming horde, cutting down swathes of the xenos, switching between fire points at different windows, ensuring the aliens were evenly dispersed. “Death to the xenos filth!” Cade roared, drawing his plasma pistol and incinerating the head of one of the genestealers inside the hab-block. He stood protectively over the girl, and plugged away at the creatures. Between them, he and Hyte had eliminated most of the creatures within the hab-block, and had the rest pinned down in the shaft. Unable to make ground, they backed away down the chute, lurking just outside of bolter range. Hyte and Forran turned back to their fire points, and joined the firestorm assaulting the horde outside. Hundreds lay dead, but the tide kept on coming. “We’re running out of space!” Gavla called. “They’re closing! 50! 40! 30!”

“Combat weapons!” The squad holstered their firearms and drew chainswords and pistols, ready to take on the enemy in hand to hand combat. “Try to avoid letting their blood touch you! We all saw what it can do! FOR THE EMPEROR!”

There was a green burst of light, and the blood angels keeled to the ground. A shrill, keening wail pierced the air. The space marines were on the ground, writhing in pain, blood leaking from their ears and pooling inside their helmets. The genestealers down the chute were seemingly immune to the noise, but before they could move they were enveloped in a bright green light, and they disappeared. Green flashes intruded through the window, and the noise faded, reduced to short bursts in cohesion with the flashes. In time, even that faded to an eerie silence.

Kyrech, Gavla and Forran rose from the ground. Hyte didn’t move. When Cade reached to help him up, the limp body didn’t stir. He gently detached the helmet, and crimson splashed across the ground, His head pale and drawn from loss of blood.
“Sir, I think you should see this!” Cade followed Kyrech to the window. A gentle mist danced across the ground outside the hab-block, and there was no sign of any xenos. Forran remembered the girl, and hastily turned to see Gavla staring at something on the ground. There was nothing but a pool of blood where the girl had been mere moments before. Cade roared in anger, and smashed his fist into the wall, leaving a dent large enough to sit in.

“Not again. Never again! Damn Xenos! I’ll kill them all!” A green shimmer flashed in the mist, and his eyes narrowed inside his helmet, as he raced toward the window. “For the Emperor! DEATH!” A wild scream as the sergeant cannoned through the window, the reinforced glass barely slowing him. Kyrech and Gavla made to follow him, but were tossed aside like rags as Forran flew back into the room, disintegrating the wall and crashing into the opposite surface.  A green light momentarily wracked his body, and blood poured from a huge gash across his sternum. Gavla dropped to the floor beside him as Kyrech trained his bolter on the gap left by the wall.
“Well? How is he?” Kyrech stole a quick glance at the limp form of Sergeant Cade Forran.
“He’s dead.”

What was left of the hab-block walls disappeared, and a shadowed, unperceivable figure marched out of the fog and onto the artificial floor. Just behind it stood a mud-stained, red-armoured figure, wreathed in smoke and with green light crackling across his body, with a ragged, limp girl clutched in his hand. He stared down at his own bloodied form, splayed across the floor, and both Gavla and Kyrech stared back at their squad sergeant.