by Guy Haley
Wherever this ship went now, it would never be greeted with joy. It would never be seen as a liberator or a bringer of safety. Whether its shadow fell across the worlds of mankind or xenos, it had nothing to offer but cargoes of pain, corruption, disease and decay. It was catastrophe trapped in a bottle, wilfully unleashed.
Perhaps nothing should be ruled out, in the end. Perhaps no deed was too dark to hold back the horror that Chaos brought. There were no ethics, no morals, nothing, that could not be sacrificed to preserve the species, to ensure that mankind survived against the odds.
Maybe that was what Guilliman had not understood before. He was beginning to think he understood it now, though it burned his soul to accept it.
Theoretical: the Emperor had been right, after all, about everything.
The aeldari, the necrons, the rest of the galaxy’s thinking beings, they were worse than men by far. The aeldari insisted they were more moral, more sophisticated, while half of them manipulated every being they possibly could to ensure the smallest advantage, while the other half cravenly offered the suffering of innocents to save themselves. All of them were equally arrogant.
The necrons took another route, worse in its way – that of a soulless existence. Now they were openly pitted against humanity, a second and terrible enemy. An unexpected war raged around the Pariah Nexus, tying up untold numbers of Guilliman’s ships as the Imperium sought to contain the threat, and yet the technology they employed might save them all, according to Belisarius Cawl.
He thought on. The boarding group went along huge processionals now so covered in organic matter they resembled the insides of diseased beasts.
He thought to the times he had raised his concerns, and had them soothed away. The Emperor had made impassioned cases for the unity of humanity, for the rediscovery of lost might and lost technology. He had never mentioned Chaos. Not once.
Guilliman thought he understood that too, for a brutal galaxy demanded a brutal regime to keep it safe. Chaos would always offer an escape from oppression, tempting the vast and teeming herds of humanity to run from the one thing that kept the nightmares away, straight into their arms.
Theoretical: the Emperor had intended this phase to be temporary. Instead, it had persisted since His internment on the Golden Throne. Practical, it was up to him to set that right.
A normal man can accomplish a dozen things at once, a great man can accomplish a thousand, he thought, recalling words his foster father, Konor, had said to him. But no man, no matter his ability or his will, can accomplish more than one grand scheme at a time.
His thoughts strayed to the Codex Imperialis, sitting unfinished in his scriptorium.
‘One thing at a time, Roboute,’ he said, rebuking himself for his impatience.
‘My lord?’ Colquan asked.
‘Nothing,’ said Guilliman.
Yet, he thought on, he could not afford to tarry. Colquan was one of a thousand spurs digging into Guilliman’s side. Their relationship had improved in recent years, but the tribune still did not trust the primarch. He was poised, constantly, to act should Guilliman even look like he was thinking of moving on the Throne. That was why Valoris had given Colquan the rank, and sent him on the crusade.
Then there was Mathieu, whose growing movement would see Guilliman second only to the Emperor in the Church. Or the radical lords and politicians who wanted him on the Throne. There were the conservatives who resented him for trammelling their power. He liked to say to those close to him – a precious few, with whom he would not share the thoughts he was currently entertaining – that he had a score of enemies outside the Imperium, but a billion within.
High-level strategic chatter filtered through his vox-beads throughout these ruminations. Screeds of information played down his helmplate, layered so deeply some of it was presented as almost solid blocks of colour. He flicked through it, analysed it. His conclusion was that Khestrin was handling the attack well.
He wondered what Mortarion thought of all this, if he still had the freedom of independent thought. He and Guilliman had never got on. Guilliman found him pessimistic. Mortarion always saw the worst in everything, and expecting no joy, he found none. He had been obsessed with overcoming hardship to the point that he would deliberately seek it out, and he was not reserved in imposing the same suffering on his gene-sons. His obsessions were manifold, and once he became fixated on something, it was impossible to redirect his attention until it had been resolved to meet his always miserable expectations. Were it his sullen resentment at the Emperor’s rescue of him, or the vexed question of the use of psychic power within the Legions, he pursued it until the bitter end. Could he not see he had been manipulated? Did he not realise that he had become a slave, that a far darker master than the Emperor laughed at him, and rejoiced in making him a parody of everything he had despised? Or did he still see himself as the wronged victim, and rejoice in his so-called triumphs? He was like Perturabo in that regard. Selfish, self-obsessed, cynical.
And yet, Guilliman felt sorrow that he had turned, that any of them had turned: broken Angron; the magnificent Fulgrim; even Curze, whose greatest crime was madness, and that was no crime at all. Guilliman had not loved each one of them the same, but these promethean beings had been his brothers in every way, and he could not help but mourn them.
He could tell no one this. He had told no one this. When his thoughts went down these roads, he was the loneliest traveller of all.
That was why he led this boarding party. That was why he rejoiced when a blast door a hundred feet wide and fifty feet tall grated back, and a wall of Mortarion’s daemon machines rolled out. That was why he drew the Emperor’s Sword, and without informing any one of his retinue of his intention, charged immediately into the fray.
‘For the Emperor! For Ultramar!’ he bellowed, his godlike voice amplified by his helm to shocking levels, and it was a bitter war cry indeed.
Chapter Nine
A PRIMARCH UNLEASHED
Colquan’s sensorium registered the power surge that presaged the opening of the door, and painted up in illuminated outline what waited behind it. Guilliman’s actions, though unanticipated, were to be expected. The Imperial Regent had been in fiery mood of late.
But though Colquan had expected Guilliman to attack, the speed of his charge took him by surprise, and he cursed himself for underestimating the physical prowess of the primarch again.
‘Custodians, form up, protect the regent!’ he commanded after the fact, when Guilliman was already halfway to the enemy. ‘Reading thirteen daemon engines in the medius threat range. Twenty-plus Traitor Astartes in the rearguard.’
The foe opened fire before the door was fully open. Bolts and compact missiles streaked out on smoky trails at the Imperial boarders. A meltagun roared. One of Guilliman’s bodyguard took the hit directly on his storm shield as he tried to keep pace with his lord. The power field gave out with an almighty bang, and the Space Marine hurled the smoking wreck towards the foe, where it skidded on the ground and crashed into their legs. They were unmoved by his response.
Guilliman was into the thick of the foe in a moment, projectiles turned aside by the Armour of Fate. Though powerful, neither the Custodians nor the Victrix Guard could keep pace with Roboute Guilliman. A mortal man his size would have moved slowly, clumsily, but Guilliman was no genetic outlier; he was a perfectly designed being, and he ran swift as the wind, the fires flowing from the Emperor’s Sword stretched out into a banner behind him. With a crash of armour, he hurled himself at the lead engine shoulder first, rocking it on its motive tracks so hard it pivoted pathetically on the rearmost, and toppled over. Guilliman finished it with a downward thrust that blew out its engine, not even noticing the crash and explosion of bolt-shells going off all over his armour’s energy field. The primarch was moving before Colquan could formulate his next exhortation that he be protected.
The d
aemon engines were myphitic blight haulers, a light, anti-armour construct the Death Guard deployed in large numbers. Their loadouts of multimeltas and missile launchers were equally useful in slaying power-armoured troops as tanks, and all of them were wheeling about to bring their weapons to bear on Guilliman. Yet he moved too fast to be accurately targeted, and Colquan lost sight of him among the vapours the haulers’ engines belched.
‘By the Emperor, to the primarch!’ he roared. Men were running forward. They were strung out. The primarch’s heedlessness had put them all in danger.
Doors opened along the side of the corridor. More Traitor Marines were behind.
‘Ambush! Ambush!’ a Space Marine shouted over the vox-link. The shouter’s icon blinked out as soon as it lit, and Colquan could not tell who had spoken. In dismay he saw more of the diseased progeny of Mortarion taking up firing positions along the railings of the upper level. He levelled his bolt caster and let fly, blasting out the chest of a hulking Plague Marine with its double shot. The warriors coming out into the corridor on the lower level were equipped with short-range plague belchers and rusted melee weapons, and moved in to engage the party hand to hand.
‘In the Emperor’s name, get up there! Move in! Protect the primarch!’ Colquan’s fear that Guilliman would be slain was the only thing that outweighed his misgivings about his survival.
But the Space Marines and the Custodians found themselves embroiled in their own battles. Those who had moved forward to guard the primarch were attacked on three fronts, and slowed, the Space Marines struggling to reform their battle line, while Guilliman was a lone flash of blue and gold surrounded by rust and greening metal.
Colquan swore and pushed on, finding himself in an unseemly jostle of armoured bodies. Plague Marines who chuckled constantly vied with those grumbling about their ailments to get to him. Colquan cut a tentacle from an armoured warrior so fat it was a surprise he could move at all. He whirled his guardian spear about and drove the tip into his swollen belly. Black guts, already well into the last stages of decay, gushed liquidly all over the Plague Marine’s armour, their acids eating into the plates and making them smoke as he dropped dead to the ground.
‘The primarch! The primarch! Protect him!’ Colquan shouted.
He crossed the golden haft of his spear with a rust-blunted plaguesword, throwing back the wielder. A lamprey face pushed out through a wrecked breathing grille, and Colquan headbutted hard, mashing the thrashing thing to pulp. A spear blow followed through the mess of the crushed mutation, and gleaming auramite caved in brittle ceramite. But his foe was strong, and gifted incredible resilience by his patron. It pushed out wildly, and Colquan found himself shoved back into Varsillian the Many-Gloried, one of his fellow Custodians.
‘We have to get to Guilliman!’ Colquan growled, as he fended off the blows of rusted blades. ‘If he falls now…’
Colquan put his opponent down, ending a thousand years of treachery with a cut up through the helm. The space opened in front of him and for a few seconds he could see Guilliman fight.
The Hand of Dominion vomited a stream of bolts into the blank frontplate of a blight crawler, cratering the rusty metal and bringing out a seepage of watery oil. The damage was minimal, but the flash of so many explosions all over the forward arc of the daemon machine blinded it, and Guilliman stepped in with his sword to deal the killing blow.
Always, it was the sword that did the damage. It roared with fire as Guilliman swung it, seeming to flare brighter as it sensed the presence of the daemon caged inside the machine. Too late, the Neverborn understood the danger it was in, and tried to flee.
Guilliman spun the sword around, pivoting over crossed feet, executing a full turn, and struck. The Emperor’s Sword hit the bulbous front of the machine in a brutal uppercut, tearing through the metal easily, and setting it ablaze with unearthly fire. Thick liquid burst from the innards as the sword ripped up through materials technological, organic and diabolical, Guilliman’s great strength and the sword’s supernaturally keen edge slicing them all as easily. The sword exploded out of the top as Guilliman finished his turn, almost cutting right the way through the daemon engine. Half the armoured frontplate fell off, exposing the mess of guts and wires that served as the machine’s workings.
The daemon made a horrible, keening noise that ran sharp claws down the surface of one’s being. The shadow of the escaping daemon rushed up from the top of the engine, seeking escape to the warp, but the Emperor’s Sword permitted no mercy for its kind. The fires from the shell seemed to leap after it, and embrace it, dragging the shadow back. Colquan had an impression of a horned face screaming in the fire, suddenly going to tatters.
As surely as if a promethium jet had been turned off, the fires died, their soul-fuel consumed. Guilliman was already onto his next target.
‘We’re supposed to be guarding him?’ said Varsillian. He had recently completed his fifth century of service, and taken the honour robes of the Wardens. ‘He needs no guarding, tribune. We are, I fear, entirely ancillary to purposes here. Guilliman cuts through the machines of the Death Guard as if they were paper stage props.’
‘Yet we must watch him,’ growled the tribune. ‘He is not invulnerable. And you must watch your tone also, Varsillian. Primarch he may be, but in him dwells the hopes of us all, for the moment. I will not have him die under my protection because we allowed ourselves to stumble into this ambush.’
Privately, he conceded that Varsillian had a point. There was nothing to greet them in that chamber that could even slow the primarch down.
For all his suspicions of Guilliman’s intentions, Colquan could not fault him as a warrior. The Adeptus Custodes’ records maintained that the primarchs had been created primarily as weapons. Having seen Guilliman fight many times now, he judged the fact proven. Guilliman exhibited many other qualities in governance, administration and law especially, but he was, ultimately, an unsheathed blade. All his other skills were adornments on the hilt.
Guilliman vanished again. Around Colquan, the press of combat slackened, enough that the two Custodians could part. Colquan reversed his grip, slashed down with the blade of his halberd, taking off the leg of a warrior at the knee. The Plague Marine toppled over, and Colquan slew him with a thrust through the neck. He twisted his blade when it had passed through, separating what was left of the Space Marine’s head from his body. The disruption field blasted most of it apart, and what went skidding through the feet of the warring parties was little more than a smoking skullcap.
Varsillian wielded a great castellan axe, which he swung around now at chest height, forcing back the three Plague Marines who sought to trap him. One moved in to engage him from his right, but Varsillian switched his swipe to a stab, thrust far out, using his back leg to put as much power as he could into his blow. The top of the axe blade punched through the Plague Marine’s breastplate, the power field flared, and Varsillian drove the axe top right through the man’s chest, bolt caster and all. It rammed into the reactor pack powering the traitor’s armour, and it exploded with a dull crump and an effusion of brown fume, scattering corroded pieces of armour and flesh everywhere. Varsillian stepped through the cloud, unharmed, his axe rising again.
Colquan thought back to the days before the Edict of Restraint was overturned. Then, the Adeptus Custodes ventured out from Terra rarely, clandestinely, and in small numbers. The missions they undertook were for the most part diplomatic, for concealing their presence after battle was nigh impossible. Fighting made them conspicuous. Politically, they could not afford to attract attention to themselves. The most combat the majority saw was in the Blood Games held on Terra itself.
The Games were no substitute for battle. To see twenty of the Emperor’s own guardians fight side by side as he did now was an honour his kind had waited millennia to witness.
Maldovar Colquan slaughtered the enemy, and it felt good to do so. He could see the
primarch’s point.
By now the Allarus Terminators had forced their way through the press. Colquan caught a glimpse of them forming up around the regent, who was very much alive. He had time for a breath of relief, then a new foe presented himself.
A champion came at him, whirling a two-handed flail around and around his head. Weighted skulls on rusty chains vomited a stream of green gas that threatened to burn through Colquan’s softseals. Colquan resisted the urge to attack immediately, holding back to judge his foe. The Plague Marine was powerfully built, his height and strength increased by the gifts of his patron god. Through gaps in his corroded armour the tribune saw the movement of flabby muscle. This champion was stronger than his fellows, and he would be as inured to pain as all of them. That made him dangerous.
The champion’s followers gave their leader room, opening up a duelling ground in the swirl of the melee. Colquan paced around his opponent, noting everything about him. The Death Guard were among the last of the Traitor Legions to retain their organisation, and had kept up their numbers by aggressive recruitment, but the greening brass honour badges and tokens of devotion this champion wore marked him out as ancient, perhaps one of the original traitors who had followed Mortarion down his dark road. His armour was streaked with rust and congealed oil. His power plant shook and coughed smoke from its exhaust ports. Viscous saliva ran from his arched breathing grille. A cyclopean eye-lens glowed green above this, and above that a single horn, slightly off-centre, thrust outward.
