The Bleeding Chalice

'Rein in the front vehicles if you have to.’ Thad-deus voxed to Colonel Vi

An acknowledgement signal was Vi

Thaddeus ducked back down into the body of the Chimera, where the Pilgrim sat in the darkness, filling the passenger compartment with its aura of menace. Thaddeus would rather not have travelled with the creature but he didn't yet trust it to be out of his sight.

'We can kill them, inquisitor.’ grated the Pilgrim. 'You know that, don't you? We are not just here to find them and report back. We are soldiers. We can kill them with our own hands.’

'I am not here for your revenge, Pilgrim.’ said Thaddeus darkly. 'I have vowed to do my duty. I will bring the Soul Drinkers to justice but that doesn't mean I'm going to get this strikeforce destroyed in the attempt. If it takes me decades then I will wait.’

There will not be another chance.’

'If I ca

1 j ?

any hope of the Inquisition ending the threat.

Vehicle on point reports small arms fire.’ came a vox from Vi

'Any hostiles?'

'Not yet.’

Good. At least it seemed the strikeforce wouldn't be heading into a combined force of Teturact's followers and Sarpedon's Marines. Thaddeus suspected this would be the only good news he got J that day KARRAIDIN'S POWER FIST ripped through two enemies, blasting their rotting bodies apart in showers of spoiled meat and bone. Bolters chattered and chewed through a dozen more as Sergeant Salk blew another apart. What had been a barren wasteland minutes before was rapidly turning into a landscape of twisted, blackened metal, stinking smoke billowing off the fallen wreckage, enemies clawing their way towards Karraidin's spearhead from every angle. Bodies fell from the sky, thudding into the ground, and more often than not something ragged and broken rose up to carry on fighting.

Salk couldn't even see the facility now, with towering engine stacks and hull segments embedded in the ground in front of him.

'Salk! We need to split the force, get through any way we can and rendezvous at the blast doors!' bellowed Karraidin, storm bolter blazing away at a knot of creatures that had once been Guardsmen, some still holding lasguns and combat knives.

Salk nodded and waved his Marines forward, Trooper Krin blasting into the shadows with his plasma gun and being rewarded with a shower of broken bodies illuminated by the plasma flash. Small arms fire - lasguns, autoguns, stub pistols - was spattering against the wreckage around them. Salk knew they had to keep moving or the sheer numbers now being thrown against them would trap them.

'After me! Krin, pick your targets and go for clusters!' Salk drew his chainsword and jogged forward, slashing at the emaciated faces that loomed through the wreckage and smoke. The fight was getting closer by the second, limbs reaching out for him, bolter fire spattering from behind him into anything that moved. A lasgun shot speared past his head and another burst against the ceramite of his chest armour - he stamped down on a corpse-soldier crawling in front of him and rammed his chainblade through the abdomen of another who fell gibbering down at him from above.

A plasma blast roared overhead and incinerated half a unit of enemies, dressed in the tatters of Naval Security uniforms, emerging from a crashed lander. They were more intact than most of the enemies Salk had faced so far, the cold hatred still legible on their faces, assault shotguns in their hands. Salk snapped off bolter shots at them then dropped into the cover of a hull section as shotgun fire ripped back at him, filling the air with a storm of shrapnel.

Bolter counter-fire tore back and Trooper Karrick dived into the fray, charging into the security troopers followed by the rest of the squad. Salk clambered to his feet and joined the melee, beheading one enemy and crushing the ribcage of another with the pommel of his chainblade. Karrick, a tough veteran with more experience than Salk but who seemed to accept the younger man's authority without question, grabbed one trooper by the wrist and hurled him against the hull plate with enough force to break his back.

The surviving troopers tried to fall back but Squad Salk never left the front foot, and in a final volley of bolter shots the Naval Security unit lay shredded and smoking on the ground.

'Keep going.’ voxed Salk. 'There'll be more.’

Salk led the way through the labyrinth of wreckage, heading towards where he knew the facility should be. He checked the squad icons - a couple of battle-brothers were wounded but it was nothing they couldn't fight through.

Salk got his first glimpse of the facility building and it was nearly his last. The single-storey building was swarming with enemy troopers of higher quality than the shambling corpses that had fallen so far. They were not resurrected dead but fanatic troopers, scores of them ma

They had to get out. The first line of defences would be a safer place to fight from than here, but the squad had to get there first.

'Grenades!' called Salk and the Marines who could do so pulled frag grenades from their belt pouches. 'Krin, give us a covering shot!'

Plasma fire erupted over the closest barricade, white-hot liquid fire rippling over the barbed wire and into the trench behind. Several Marines hurled grenades a split-second afterwards, multiple reports adding to the plasma shot and throwing plumes of pulverised earth into the air.

'Now!' ordered Salk and led the charge, sprinting the few metres over the ruined barricade and into the same trench that Captain Korvax had taken from the eldar a decade earlier. This time it was not xenos but corrupted heretics the Soul Drinkers were fighting, still wearing the uniforms of their original units, Imperial Guard and PDF troopers, even private militia - Salk recognised the emerald uniform of Cartel Polios before he cut the man wearing it in two. Teturact's army had come from all over his empire, and doubdess every world he had visited had provided a tithe of armed worshippers to their master.

Karrick was at Salk's side in the trench, hauling an ex-Elysian Guardsman towards him and cutting his throat with a combat knife.

Salk glanced down the trench and saw other Soul Drinkers doing what they did better than almost any other force in the galaxy - close-quarters battle, cold and fast, toe-to-toe with the enemy where they were safer than anywhere else in the battle.

Salk checked the icons again - it was Brother Vaeryn they had left behind, his life-icon flickering to show great blood loss and trauma.

Vaeryn, come in.’ voxed Salk.

'Lost a leg, sergeant.’ came the crackly reply.