Ben Counter - Galaxy in Flames

"Very well,’ said Tarvitz. 'Go. Fall back in good order to the inner domes and the temple, there are barricades there. Go! And don't wait for me!'

He put his head briefly over the pillar and fired his bolter, kicking a burst of shots towards Eidolon's Emperor's Children swarming all over the far side of the dome. More covering fire sprayed from his warriors' guns as they began falling back by squads.

The dome between him and his goal was littered with bodies, some of them chewed into unrecogВ­nisable sprays of torn flesh. He waited until his warriors had put enough distance between them and the enemy and broke from cover.

Bolter shots tore up the ground beside him and he rolled into the cover of a fallen pillar, crawling as fast as he could to reach the passageway that led

from the dome and curved around its columned circumference towards the east wing of the PrecenВ­tor's Palace.

Lucius was somewhere in these ruins and Tarvitz had to find him.

Loken ducked and threw himself to the floor, skidВ­ding along the fire-blackened tiles of the plaza. The palace loomed above him, whirling as Loken spun on his back and fired up at the closest World Eater. One shot caught the warrior in the leg and he colВ­lapsed in a roaring heap. Torgaddon leapt upon him, plunging his sword into the traitor's back.

Loken climbed to his feet as more fire stuttered across the plaza. He tried to get a bearing on the enemy among the heaps of the dead and the jagged slabs of marble sticking up from the edges of shell craters, but it was impossible.

The plaza between the chaos of the palace and the dark mass of the city was infested with World Eaters, charging forwards to exploit the breach made by the Emperor's Children.

There's a whole squad out here,’ said Torgaddon, wrenching his sword from the World Eater. We're right in the middle of them,’

Then we keep going,’ said Loken.

Back on his feet, he reloaded his bolter as they hurried through the wreckage and charnel heaps, scanning the darkness for movement. Torgaddon kept close behind him, sweeping his bolter between chunks of tiling or fallen masonry. Fire

snapped around them and the sounds of battle coming from the palace became ever more terrible, the war-cries and explosions tearing through the violent night.

'Down!' yelled Torgaddon as a burst of plasma fire lanced from the darkness. Loken threw himself to the ground as the searing bolt flashed past him and bored a hole in a slab of fallen stone behind him. A dark shape came at him and Loken saw the flash of a blade, bringing his bolter up in an instinctive block. He felt chainblade teeth grinding against the metal of his gun and kicked out at his attacker's groin.

The World Eater pivoted away from the blow easВ­ily, turning to smash Torgaddon to the ground with the butt of his chainaxe. Torgaddon's attack gave Loken a chance to regain his feet and he threw aside the ruined bolter to draw his own sword.

Torgaddon wrestled with another World Eater on the ground, but his friend would have to fend for himself as Loken saw that his opponent was a capВ­tain, and not just any captain, but one of the World Eaters' best.

'Kharn!' said Loken as the warrior attacked.

Kharn paused in his attack and, for the briefest moment, Loken saw the noble warrior he had spo­ken with in the Museum of Conquest, before something else swamped it again – something that twisted Kharn's face with hatred.

That second was enough for Loken, allowing him to dodge back behind a fan of broken stone jutting from the edge of crater. Bullets still carved through

the air and somewhere beyond his sight, TorgadВ­don was fighting his own battle, but Loken could not worry about that now.

'What happened, Kharn?' cried Loken. 'What did they turn you into?'

Kharn screamed an incoherent bellow of rage and leapt towards him with his axe held high. Loken braced his stance and brought his blade up to catch Kharn's axe as it slashed towards him and the two warriors clashed in a desperate battle of strength

'Kharn…' said Loken through gritted teeth as the World Eater forced the chainaxe's whirling teeth towards his face. 'This is not the man I knew! What have you become?'

As their eyes met, Loken saw Kharn's soul and despaired. He saw the warrior who had sworn oaths of brotherhood and pledged himself to the Crusade as he himself had done, the warrior who had seen the terrors and tragedies of the Crusade as well as its victories. And he saw the dark madness that had swamped that in bloodshed and betrayals yet to be enacted.

'I am the Eightfold Path,’ snapped Kharn, his every words punctuated by a froth of blood.

'No!' shouted Loken, pushing the World Eater away. 'It doesn't have to be this way'

'It does,’ said Kharn. 'There is no way off the Path. We must always go further,’

The humanity drained from Kharn's face and Loken knew that the World Eater was truly gone and that only in death would this battle end.

Loken backed away, fending off a flurry of blows from Kharn's axe, until he was forced back against a slab of rubble. His foe's axe buried itself in the stone beside him and Loken slammed the pommel of his sword into Kharn's head. Kharn rode the blow and smashed his forehead into Loken's face, grabbing his sword arm and wrestling him to the ground.

They struggled in the mud like animals, Kharn trying to grind Loken's face into the shattered stone and Loken trying to throw him off. Loken rolled onto his back as he heard the rumble of an engine like an earthquake and the glare of floodlights stabbed out and threw Kharn's outline into silhouВ­ette.

Knowing what was coming, Loken hammered his fist into Kharn's face over and over again, pushing him upright with a hand clasped around his neck. The World Eater struggled in Loken's grip as the light grew stronger and the roaring form of a Land Raider crested the ridge of rubble behind them like a monster rising from the deep.

Loken felt the huge impact as the Land Raider's dozer blade slammed into Kharn, the sharpened prongs at its base punching through the World Eater's chest. He released Kharn's body and rolled to the edge of the crater as the Land Raider rose up, carrying the struggling Kharn with it. The mighty tank crashed back down and Loken pressed his body into the mud as it ground over him, the roarВ­ing of its engine passing inches above him.

Then it was over, the tank rumbled onwards, carВ­rying the impaled World Eater before it like some gory trophy. Tanks were all around him, the Eye of Horus glaring from their armoured hulls, and Loken recognised the livery they were painted in. The Sons of Horus.

For a moment, Loken just stared at the force surgВ­ing towards the palace. Gunfire flared as they drove towards their prize.

A hand reached down and grabbed Loken, dragВ­ging him, battered and bloody, into cover from the guns of the tanks. He looked up and saw Torgad-don, similarly mauled by the encounter with the World Eaters.

Torgaddon nodded in the direction of the Land Raider. 'Was that-?' 'Kharn,’ nodded Loken. 'He's gone,’ 'Dead?'

'Maybe, I don't know,’

Torgaddon looked up at the Sons of Horus speartip driving for the palace. 'I think even Tarvitz might have trouble holding the palace now,’ Then we'll have to hurry,’

'Yes. Stay low and let's keep out of any more trou­ble,’ said Torgaddon, 'unless Abaddon and Little Horus aren't challenging enough on their own,’

'Saul will make them pay for every piece of rub­ble they capture,’ said Loken, pulling himself painfully to his feet. Kharn had hurt him, but not so much that he couldn't fight. 'For his sake, let's make that count for something,’

The two friends forged through the rubble once again, towards the Mackaran Basilica.