Free Deathwatch by Steve Parker Page A

slipping from the warp so close to Imperial planetary defences that, within hours, the Naval Defence Monitors were overwhelmed and obliterated. Chaos drop-ships fell by the dozen, concentrating on the eastern regions of the Frajian continent, particularly around the bustling trade city Diasport.
    Imperial Guard regiments garrisoning the city had dug in to offer every bit of resistance they could muster. Via both astropathic and deep space relay communications, they had sent out a desperate call for aid.
    It was by chance alone that the Imperial Fists Second Company were in the subsector. They were two days out. Those two days almost ended the fight. The Guard regiments were little more than tattered remnants when the Fists arrived. Had it not been for the support of a redoubtable civilian militia determined to protect their homes and families, the city of Diasport would have fallen before the Adeptus Astartes could have made any difference.
    As it was, Maximmion Voss and the rest of his company, under the command of the renowned Second Captain Rudiel Straker, found themselves fighting against the clock. Whoever had designed the defences of Diasport ought to have been executed, at least in Voss’s eyes. The city’s guns were mostly on the coast, intended to prevent an attack by sea. The land to the west of the city had been given over to agriculture with little thought for effective fortification. So it was that Second Company fought from hastily constructed earthworks behind which they had dug and blasted out a complex trench network. Razor wire and tank traps added to the mix. It wasn’t much, not against the vile forces of Traitor Marines, but, given the identity of the Chapter defending the city, it was proving enough.
    Once ordered to hold ground, the Imperial Fists were unrivalled. They were the finest defensive fighters and counter-siege specialists in the modern Imperium. Voss intended to prove that.
    He ran along the primary trench, heading south, his powerful legs pounding the muddy duckboards. He was unusually short for a Space Marine. In the militia, there were standard humans – mundanes , some of the brothers called them – who cast as long a shadow as he did. Few cast a shadow as wide, however, for what Voss lacked in height, he more than compensated for in hard, grainy muscle. There was nothing he could do about his height, and not a few of the Chapter’s Apothecaries looked at him askance whenever he passed by. Perhaps it was a kind of unconscious compensation, but Voss had become prone to voluntary sessions of extreme physical training. His muscles swelled beyond their already significant gene-boosted mass. His armour had to be adjusted by the Chapter’s tech-servitors. Then it had to be adjusted again, and again. Finally, he had been told – no, commanded! – to grow no thicker. His strength and power had outstripped those around him, but concerns had arisen about his mobility in the field. So far, these had not been borne out. But nevertheless, with some reluctance, Voss had acceded to the demands of his superiors. He grew no bigger and, from that moment, trained only to maintain what he had.
    What he had remained formidable. As he ran to shore up a potential weakness in the southern defences, he carried not one but two portable Hellfire missile launchers, fully loaded, one in either armoured hand.
    Bolter and autocannon-rounds whipped and whined over his head. To his right, the earthworks shuddered. Dirt leapt into the air to shower down on his bright yellow helmet and pauldrons. A tank round – high explosive – had missed him by a few metres only. Voss kept running. Up ahead, he could see the battle-brothers of Squad Richter pouring bolter and plasma-fire onto the kill-zone from the firing step. Suddenly, as one, they ducked. Another tank round whistled over them, smacking into the rear wall of the trench.
    The brothers of Squad Richter closest to the impact threw themselves to safety barely