Father of Us All!
14: Chapter 14 – Witness Me!
Father of Us All!
“For the Imperium!
For Lorgar!” The roar of Thrax, commanding officer of the 3rd Heavy Assault Squad, tore from his throat, transformed by his helmet’s Vox-grille into an amplified battle cry that mixed static noise with pure fury.
That roar, like the wrath of an angel, drowned out the shriek of chainswords and the thunder of bolters, echoing through the alien vessel’s bizarre white streamlined interior.
Thrax, and every member of the 3rd Heavy Assault Squad, were the living embodiment of the Word Bearers’ faith and strength.
The Cataphractii Terminator armour they wore made their already massive frames even larger, even more imposing, like a procession of moving cathedrals draped in scripture and Icons.
The deep-grey armour plates were carved with dense excerpts from the Book of Lorgar and hymns to the Emperor, every engraved line seeming to speak of boundless devotion to the God of Mankind.
On their heavy pauldrons, the Word Bearers’ Legion device, the Book and Star device symbolising “Truth” and “Proclamation” — gleamed with austere radiance in the dim light.
Their very presence was a holy judgement visited upon the alien’s place of desecration.
“For the Emperor!” “Crush them!
Purge this profane ground!” The order given, the Space Marines moved as one.
Unlike the nimble advance of lighter troops, the charge of Cataphractii Terminators carried an unstoppable, ceremonial gravity.
Servo-motors hummed deep and powerful beneath the heavy armour, like a war overture played on a cathedral organ.
Their footfalls crashed against the vessel’s pristine, hard floor, each step making the silver-white structure shudder and groan.
Their first collective charge was a perfect rite of annihilation.
“For Holy Terra!” Twin-linked Bolters spat their deadly tongues of fire.
These were no mere firearms, but sacred weapons blessed by Mechanicum priests and anointed with Sacred Unguents by the Word Bearers’ Chaplains.
Their thunder was deeper and louder than that of ordinary bolters, each burst like the toll of a bell announcing divine judgement.
In the relatively confined corridors and chambers of the ship’s interior, this firepower was nothing short of catastrophic.
Each bolt was no longer simple ammunition, but a messenger of vengeance carrying the boundless fury of the human Imperium and the religious zeal of the Word Bearers.
They screamed toward those pearl-white figures, effortlessly tearing through the Bio-armour that appeared smooth and hard, blasting the inhuman flesh and bone within into pale-blue gore that splattered in every direction.
The barrage was dense as rain, sweeping down everything that dared to stand before it, painting brutal murals on the white walls with explosions and blood.
Those alien warriors clad in bone-white close-fitting armour — their compound eyes flickered with unmistakable disbelief and panic.
Their technology might be strange, their vessels might be advanced, but they had clearly never faced boarding actions so savage, so direct, so saturated with religious fervour.
Human tactical logic was supposed to be broadsides and long-range bombardment, not a host of heavily armoured angels of death storming into their home and conducting face-to-face slaughter in the most primal, most violent manner imaginable.
Their resistance was hurried and disordered; the energy beams or bio-acid that their pure-white unknown weapons discharged occasionally left scorched marks or hissing craters in the Terminators’ thick armour.
But such attacks could not halt this constantly advancing, constantly firing wall of death.
The 3rd Heavy Assault Squad was a heavy cavalry lance blessed by holy power, indomitable and unyielding, and the alien’s entire defensive line was like a sheet of thin silk, torn through, crushed, and completely pierced with ease.
They held their tight assault formation, their overlapping bolter coverage leaving almost no blind spots, cutting down every alien that attempted to flank or regroup.
And at the very forefront of it all stood Thrax.
He was the sharpest, most irresistible tip of that lance, the highest crest of the wave of destruction.
He had forgone ranged weapons, gripping a roaring chainsword in each hand.
These two weapons were not standard issue; their grips were wound with holy scripture parchment, and their toothed blades were inscribed with prayers of alien-ward.
In this moment, those prayers were spinning with the chainsword engines at high speed, blurring into a sweeping radius of death.
“Lorgar!
Father of us all!
Witness me!” “For the Emperor!
For the Imperium!” His war cry was a direct offering to his Primarch and to the Imperium itself, the highest expression of his own faith.
His charging posture was not that of a warrior, but of a divine war machine that had utterly lost control, existing only to destroy.
The dual chainswords swept before him, becoming a death storm that engulfed everything.
Any alien that dared enter the range of his attacks, whether raising a white weapon to fire, or lunging with razor-sharp chitinous limbs — was swept into that storm in an instant.
The chainsword teeth ripped through Bio-armour, bit through chitin carapace, and churned the flesh and bone within to ruin.
Pale-blue blood and fragments of organic tissue sprayed outward in all directions, painting the walls and ceiling around him with strange and profane patterns.
Dozens of alien warriors did not even manage to produce their shrill cries before they were reduced to drifting blood mist and scattered remains in the roar of the chainswords.
His stride never slowed; each swing, each cleaving blow, drove him deeper into the ship.
And behind him, he left only a trail of alien remains and blue slurry, reeking of raw blood, a road paved in death.
In what felt like the span of a single blink, his originally solemn deep-grey Terminator armour was completely drenched.
Thick, faintly luminescent pale-blue blood covered the sacred scripture engraved on the armour plates, dripping steadily from his pauldrons, pooling into rivulets across his chestplate, making him look as though he wore a coat of strange new lacquer.
Had it not been for the sharp Word Bearers Legion device and the chainswords still howling in his hands, his blood-soaked appearance would almost have passed for a warrior charging from the ranks of the Ultramarines.
Elsewhere, Chaplain Korol led the squad in boarding the vessel.
“Repent!
This day shall be your death!” “Repent before our battle-brothers!
Repent before our fallen legionaries!
Repent before the billions of mortals who died because of you!” Korol carried a bolt pistol in the left hand and a Chaplain’s crozius in the right, and the legionaries in their Mark II Power Armour followed close in Korol’s wake.
The thunder of bolts advanced like a rhythmic war-dance, laden with the heavy scent of death, crashing down upon the aliens.
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