The Successors by Graham McNeill

Author:Graham McNeill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2022-01-18T11:37:39+00:00

PATIENCE KILLS

GARY KLOSTER

With bloodied hands, the Crimson Fists have fought against the ever-growing green tide on ten thousand worlds, enacting a vicious crusade born amidst the War of the Beast to see the ork threat burned from the stars. Devastated by the disaster on Rynn’s World and numerous other catastrophes, the Era Indomitus has brought them new blood with which they will become Dorn’s glorious vanguard once more.

There was a wound in the face of Rynn’s World.

Reyher Romero closed his red-painted gauntlet around a strut of the ancient cargo plane as it circled the massive crater. The strength in the Space Marine’s power armour easily held him in place as the craft tilted, but he had to be careful not to tear the strut in half. This plane, meant for supplying the outposts of Rynn’s World, was fragile compared to the Thunderhawk transports Romero was used to. He hated it for that, and its slow, rattling crawl through the sky, but it did have one advantage over those heavily armoured combat craft. It had windows, and through them Romero could see the raw pit that had once been the Arx Tyrannus, the mighty fortress-monastery of the Crimson Fists.

‘One missile.’ Sergeant Castellar’s voice cut through the drone of the plane’s engines. ‘One weapon error, and our Chapter was almost destroyed, our world almost lost.’

One missile, spiralling back down and smashing into the ammunition stores. The Arx Tyrannus had been a mighty fortress, and now there was nothing, just a monstrous hole carved into the Hellblade Mountains. But something in the crater caught the light of the setting sun. Romero increased the magnification of his amour’s visor until he could see the monument that stood in the crater’s centre. A massive block of black granite, supporting a huge metal fist. That metal had once formed the gates of the fortress-monastery, and long before that it had been part of the hull armour of the Rutilus Tyrannus, the starship that had been the Crimson Fists’ original home. Now it marked the place where six hundred Space Marines had died.

‘So much lost.’ As Castellar spoke, the larger of Rynn’s World’s twin suns slipped below the horizon, and the great metal fist caught its last crimson rays, glowing red as if dipped in blood. ‘But our ­brothers did not despair. We are the furious hand of the Emperor, and in glorious battle we triumphed! Look at that monument and understand the lesson that it teaches. We can be hurt, ­brothers, but we can never be stopped!’

Romero stared at the gleaming fist, so like the one painted on his armour. A good lesson, yes, but… What would his veteran ­brothers say, the ones that had survived the Battle of Rynn’s World, the ones who’d known the men whose names were laser-carved straight through that huge block of dark stone? What had they learned from this disaster?

Romero didn’t know. The veteran Firstborn Crimson Fists never talked about it. Not to a Primaris Marine like him.

The squad stayed

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