C. Goto - Dawn of War

“We have little time left, Gabriel. The sorcerer must have released the daemon,” said Mordecai, clearly relieved that Gabriel had returned to lead the Space Marines.

“Our course is clear,” said Gabriel resolutely, making his decision instantly. “We must destroy this Chaos sorcerer and his lackeys… and we must attend to the daemon before it is too late-it will not find our souls as weak as it has those of others,” he added, Isador’s face flickering behind his eyes.

“What about the eldar, captain?” asked Corallis, unsure about how to approach the aliens.

“This is a desperate hour, sergeant, and the eldar risk their already meagre forces to confront the evil on Tartarus. They are our allies, at least for today,” replied Gabriel with only a hint of hesitation, speaking such heretical words in front of an inquisitor of the Emperor. But Mordecai simply nodded his agreement, and Corallis leapt out of the Rhino to disseminate the orders.

The Land Raider roared through the hail, its lascannons slicing into the greenskins and cutting them down in swathes. Splutters of gunfire rattled back at the charging transports, pinging off their thick armour and grinding gashes out of their bodywork. But the Land Raider showed no signs of slowing as it powered onwards, heading directly for the biggest wartrukk in the ork line, pulsing javelins of las-fire into its front armour.

Gretchin and slugga boyz scattered out of its path as the Land Raider drove through the vanguard of the ork force, flattening a warbike as it fell under the heavy tracks of the huge vehicle, making the transport bounce and swerve.

“Brace for impact!” yelled Tanthius from the viewing hatch, preparing the Terminators within for the collision. Sergeant Ckrius linked his arm around a brace in the gun turret just in time; the Razorback crashed straight into the front of the rumbling wartrukk.

The impact sent Tanthius flying out of the hatch and over the wreckage of both vehicles. He reached out his arms in front of him and let the powerful servos in his armour absorb his weight as he struck the ground on the other side. His momentum pushed him into a roll, and he was quickly back on his feet, unleashing the might of his storm bolter into the backs of the orks on the wrecked wartrukk.

Ckrius quickly unhooked himself from the Land Raider and climbed up onto the roof, drawing the officer’s sword that he had salvaged from a battlefield corpse as he saw a huge greenskin slam its choppa into the side hatch. Only a couple of days earlier, Ckrius would have had no idea what to do, and would certainly never have dreamt of leaping off a roof onto the back of an enormous, massively muscled green alien. But today he was a seasoned ork-killer. Holding his blade firmly in his right hand, he dropped off the Land Raider directly down onto the creature’s back, driving his sword cleanly between the beast’s collarbone and its shoulder blade, letting his fall push the blade in right up to its hilt. The ork hardly even had time to shriek before the blade pierced straight down through its heart, killing it instantly.

The other side hatch of the Land Raider burst open and a Marine in Terminator armour sprang out with a massive thunder hammer swinging around its head. The Terminator squad had re-equipped itself ready for the demands of this hill-top battle. The Marine stopped suddenly at the sight of the little human soldier tugging his brittle sword out of the greenskin’s shoulder. Then he nodded to Ckrius and leapt forward into the crowd of orks that were pressing towards the wreck, his hammer sweeping in lethal arcs. Three more Terminators stormed out of the Razorback in his wake, each stealing a surprised glance at the solitary storm trooper blasting away with his hellgun, before they opened up with their storm bolters and flamers.

Disciplined volleys of fire riddled the greenskins that charged towards Ckrius, and he flicked a glance to his right. Pounding across the slick battlefield towards their sergeant came the rest of the storm troopers, leaving a couple of Marines to support the heavy guns of the Rhino from which they had spilled.

Bolter shells flashed past her head, but she ignored them, trusting that the remnants of the Storm squad and the wraithguard would keep the shots away from her. At her side, the last of the Biel-Tan warlocks sent crackling blasts of warp energy jousting from his fingertips, cooking the flesh of Chaos Marines inside their armour and making their souls cry out in horror. The once pristine white armour of the Storm squad was now scratched and dull, coated in layers of dirt and blood. But they fought with a passion and determination known only to the eldar race.

Skrekrea had been here before, on this very mountainside with her brother, all those centuries ago-and now her brother, Jaerielle, was gone. These daemons would pay dearly for his soul. She flipped and danced around the rain of bolter fire, rattling off shuriken from her pistol and slicing her power sword with immaculate precision. She plunged her blade straight through the green and black armour of a Chaos Marine, shrieking a cry into his face as she withdrew it, and watching his head shatter and explode as her rage was funnelled through the Banshee Mask on her own head, transforming it into a psychosonic blast. As her sword withdrew, she flipped it over and drove it blindly behind her, skewering another Alpha Legionary in the back of the neck as he tried to slip past towards the farseer.

Macha held her arms up into the heavens and called down the lightning, forming it into spheres of pure, blue energy that revolved in the air in front of her chest. With a slight contraction of her eyes, she fired the energy balls searing through the dark, moist air towards the Chaos sorcerer on the higher island-peak. With his arms also raised to greet the storm, Sindri hardly even noticed the fireballs blazing towards him. But at the last second, one of his arms snapped out to his side, punching the blue flames and exploding them into showers of red fire, as the Maledictum stone in his fist flared with power.

Turning his eyes to face Macha, Sindri glared through the hail, wind, and bolts of warp energy, his eyes burning with red and gold fires, daring her to interfere. For a moment, Macha felt like the sorcerer was breathing into her face, as his eyes seemed to fill her entire field of vision. But then he turned away from her again, raising his face and hands back to the storm, crying into its heart.

A phalanx of Alpha Legionaries strode around Sindri, repositioning themselves between the sorcerer and the farseer, as the islands of rock bobbed and swirled on the flood of fire around the mountain top. They braced their bolters, checking their aim against the motion of the ground beneath their feet, and then loosed a volley of fire down towards the eldar. Macha, with nowhere to go, raised her hand and a jolt of blue flame seared out to meet the bolter fire, detonating the shells in mid-air. The Marines fired again and again, and Macha was forced to contend with them rather than Sindri, despite the fact that he was so close. If only more eldar had survived. Then she realised that the eldar had failed: Gabriel… Gabriel…

“Almost! Almost!” cried Sindri into the storm, his face convulsing with power and pain as tendrils of daemonic energy started to lash down at his skin. But he could not wait any longer; he had waited so long and been so patient all these years, even putting up with the humiliations of service to that cretin, Lord Bale.

Raging with impatience, Sindri pointed the Maledictum towards a knot of Alpha Legionaries and Imperial Guardsmen on a floating mass of rock nearby. The stone blazed with power and a lance of red light flashed into the soldiers, exploding them into a rain of blood and disintegrating the rock beneath their feet.