The Solar War

by John French

  Halbract looked up. The eyes of his command crew gazed down at him from the stacked tiers of platforms circling the command dais.

  ‘Forwards,’ he said.

  And the Second Sphere fleet lit its engines and plunged down towards the traitors.

  The Iron Warriors saw them when they were still distant. They began to run calculations estimating strength and risk. They did not slow or break formation. They could not. They did not have time to spare.

  The first of the nova shells reached its detonation zone and exploded. The blast wave stripped void shields from five warships. Another struck, and another and another, until the Iron Warriors fleet was strobing with fire.

  The Monarch of Fire was the first ship to engage as it entered range. Plasma poured from it. Three ships vanished in curtains of light. The fleet behind it split, lancing into the Iron Warriors. Macro shells flew from batteries to meet them, and the night vanished in the flash of explosions.

  Outer Solar System

  Terror grew at the edge of the light of the sun.

  On Neptune’s moon Laomedia, the quiet followers of a sect called the Paths of Revelation pumped kalma gas into the habitats sunk into the satellite’s skin.

  The Paths of Revelation had grown from old seeds planted in Old Night. Laomedia was not a kind home. Fuel reservoirs and processing plants ate its people. The wars between xenos, pirates and empire builders had seen it change hands many times. Its population had been slaves and citizens and the meat fed into the machine of its industries. The Unity of the Imperium had changed some of that, but not all. And in the uncertainty of that life, the Paths of Revelation had found generations of followers. They were patient, waiting for their time to come, knowing that one day the spirits of truth would come, and both they and all those that had preceded them would ascend as one to a realm without want, or hunger, or limit of delight.

  And now that time had come. They had heard the call crooned into their ears as they slept. So after they sent the habitats to sleep, they overrode the mag-locks of every fourth hab-unit. They went between the unlocked doors, clothed in tattered rags bleached white or stained red. They took something from those who slept inside each door they opened. A trinket, a hand, a face. And when Laomedia woke again, it woke screaming.

  In the warp, the tides of delight and spite heard the screams and sang in chorus.

  On Saturn, the dead came as terror’s heralds.

  Night Lords had taken civilian ships fleeing Uranus. There were bulk haulers and shuttle transports, packed with people fleeing towards the hoped-for safety of Saturn or the interplanetary gulfs. They found no safety or mercy. Their holds bearing the dead and dying, their helms and engines locked on course, the ships drove at Saturn. The first warnings and hails from the planet’s defences triggered vox-recordings in each ship. Wails, screams and pleas filled the ears of the defenders as they fired, and tore the first slaughter ship from the void. More and more ships of the dead came to burn on the edge of the great planet’s rings. Blood poured into the void and froze; screams vanished into the vacuum. And just out of weapons range, the ships of the VIII Legion circled, watched and laughed.

  In the light of the guns and in the sound of last pleas for mercy, thirsting things drank.

  On the Grylor city-station death came from within.

  The size of a hive city, the station had grown from old ships moored next to each other that had been bound by bridges and growths of welded metal. Tethered to an asteroid on a slow orbit of the sun, it was a layover for ships plying the outer system trade routes. But no ships had come for weeks. No signals from the Throneworld, no news or warnings – just the flashes of distant lights, and the dreams of red rivers flowing between forests of pale trees without leaves. On and on the quiet went.

  The blight began with food. Starch paste grew green-and-yellow blooms. Tanks of nutrient base soured to black sludge. Bit by bit, Grylor’s food stores went bad. Some ate it anyway. They died screaming, voiding fluids, blood clogging their eyes. The water was next. Salts formed in reservoir tanks and pipes. Those that drank it wasted to nothing, unable to weep from thirst. After four days the whole of the city-station was deserted. Its atmosphere systems circulated air through corridors and rooms peopled only by corpses covered in forests of mould and pale fungus.

  In the light of fizzing lumens, rotting things pupated and swelled as they breathed in the silence.

  Strike Frigate Persephone, Inner System Gulf

  Sigismund saw the dead ship fall back. Silence hung over the Persephone as the image of the vessel receded until it was marked only by the blink of a rune on the tactical display.

  ‘More names to mark on the walls of the fallen,’ said Rann, a growl edging his low voice. ‘The traitors will pay, my brother. We will ensure it.’

  Sigismund did not reply, but watched the marker rune until the sensors lost hold of the dead ship’s signal. It had been the Sun Child – a young ship, set to the void in the year before the war had begun. Now it would drift as a tomb. Maybe one day its hull would be reclaimed by the victor of this last battle, but if not it would drift on the solar tides, cold and dark, until the sun claimed it or its iron corpse became a cloud of debris.

  They had been losing ships day by day and hour by hour. It was as though the Solar System were claiming a blood price for every step they took towards Terra. Battle damage had claimed some early on, others had succumbed to their wounds over time. They had ­scuttled some, taking what crew and supplies they could and sending the ships to death pyres that lit the gulf of night. Others, like the Sun Child, they had simply had to let fall back as their damaged reactors failed. There was no choice, and all of the surviving fleet knew it. They could see the battle-light glimmer around Mars, and hear the broken signals from Uranus and Saturn. The jaws of the enemy were biting deep.

  There were enemies loose in the gulf between the worlds too, wild fleets and carrion feeder ships looking for easy prey. Some had tried to slow Sigismund’s force. All who had tried had died.

  ‘We are entering the inner system,’ came the voice of one of the command crew. Sigismund could hear the exhaustion and the control in the officer’s voice. ‘My lords, what is our course?’

  Sigismund did not need to look at the display to know the position. There were fleets down around Mars and swarming from the outer system to the inner. A large force was bearing down on Terra and Luna from above the orbital disc. It was not a choice of where they could make a difference. He had brought fewer than a hundred ships to this point – all were damaged and under-strength in contingent and crew. The battles they were riding towards would be the clash of thousands of forces as great as or greater than those they had faced at Pluto. The choice was simply where they would stand in this next passage of war and where their blood would fall.

  ‘On the ground of the world that bore me. At the heart of the Imperium that made me,’ said Sigismund, hearing the words come to his lips in answer to the thoughts turning in his head. He looked at Rann, and the scarred warrior, who smiled through victory and death just the same, gave a grim nod. ‘I will stand there, at my father’s side.’

  ‘And I will stand there with you,’ said Rann.

  ‘Terra,’ said Sigismund, feeling the tug of old prophecy at the edge of his thoughts. ‘Hold course for Terra.’

  Caul’s edge

  The birthplace of wolves

  Mars crowned by fire

  Freighter ship Antius, Jovian Caul

  The Antius sped on through the night towards the growing orb of Jupiter. Behind it, in the dark gulf it had crossed from Uranus, the pinprick flares of battle glittered like mica dust cast into a ray of sunlight. Before it lay the Jovian Caul, glimmering like a reflection of the distant battle-light.

  Since days long past, Jupiter had been the seat of the Jovian Void Clans and home to shipyards that made spacecraft unlike any other in the light of Sol
or beyond. Ancient mysteries went into the design of those ships, some unknown even to the priests of Mars. The blood-bound clans had been allowed to keep much of their power and many of their secrets in exchange for their fealty to Terra. The xenos breed that had dominated their moons had been destroyed in the early months of the Great Crusade. In spite of that liberation, some amongst the Consanguinities left unspoken the belief that they had exchanged inhuman tyrants for a single human one. That strain of doubt had not stopped Jupiter’s shipyards becoming a nursery from which many of the fleets of the Great Crusade were born, first into a war of conquest and then a war for survival.

  The Caul was the sphere of micro debris that surrounded Jupiter’s shipyards and manufactoria. It extended deep into space in every direction. There, new ships were born, refitted or torn apart in the mazes of the equatorial breakers yards. On the edge of the great planet’s gravity lived the low-caste reclaimers, who pulled scrap from the dark of the inner system gulf. In the polar Shoal city-stations, the high clans ruled populations bound to them by blood, marriage and oath. The void was in them all, it was said – a coldness in their blood that the illumination of the Imperial Truth could not banish. Now, as the enemies of that Imperium came, the void-born of Jupiter swarmed into the dark to defend their home.

  Amongst the gun-sloops and brigantines of the Jovian clans moved the ships of the Third Sphere fleet. These were warships of the Imperial Army, and the VII and IX Legions. All stood ready for battle. Signals had arrived from Uranus and from Terra. They knew that coming for them was the power that had broken the Elysian Gate. They knew that, this side of Luna, Jupiter and its sphere of dominance was the greatest force that the invaders would have to overcome. No commander hoping to take Terra could leave the void might of Jupiter uncontested.

  On the bridge of the Antius, hurtling towards Jupiter, Mersadie Oliton could see neither what waited, nor what lay behind them.

  Red lights blinked on consoles. The light reflected from the blood and oil running from the tech-priest that lay at her feet. Chi-32-Beta was dying.

  ‘What ship is still out there?’ she asked. ‘The ship that the assault was launched from?’

  Chi-32-Beta nodded. A fresh wash of dark liquid oozed from beneath the enginseer’s robes. Behind Mersadie, a growing crowd of refugees from the ship’s holds were filling the helm platform.

  ‘They… they have been attempting to establish vox contact with their assault party, but…’ Chi-32-Beta’s voice became a burble of static and the lights on the consoles across the bridge flickered. ‘But there has been no… no reply…’

  ‘They are dead,’ said Mersadie.

  ‘H-How…’

  ‘It does not matter. Can you get the ship under control?’

  Chi-32-Beta trembled, and a second later the motion spread through the lights.

  ‘No… not control. It is wounded, but it will run true. Crew…’

  ‘We have crew,’ said Mersadie, looking around at the ragged figures on the platform. A few were moving between the consoles. There were still spatters of blood on some of the equipment, though the bodies of the dead had been removed and unsuccessful attempts made to clean the stains and scorches from deck and helm. Most of the refugee crew were looking at her and the tech-priest. Terror and uncertainty blended in their eyes. She looked at Gade. The former dock pilot was glancing at the screens and levers next to the main helm control banks.

  ‘Gade,’ she called, using the man’s name and putting every scrap of the confidence she was not feeling into her words. He looked around at her. ‘Get someone on every position. Do it now.’

  Gade nodded and turned. She heard him begin to shout.

  ‘Mil…’ began Chi-32-Beta. ‘It is a military ship… I have been trying to make… interference… so that… so that our enemy won’t realise…’ The enginseer coughed a mouthful of half-binary.

  ‘The engines,’ asked Mersadie. ‘Are they working?’

  ‘Yes, but if we change course they will see, they will realise… Weapons, they will have weapons…’

  The words sank cold into Mersadie. They could have blown the Antius to dust. They still could now. But they had come to make sure that she was dead. That was what was holding them back now: the need to be certain that she was no more. Somewhere out there, eyes were watching auspex and signal screens, kill orders held on tongues.

  ‘Can you see it?’ she asked. ‘Can the ship’s sensors see this enemy?’

  ‘A ghost on the edge of sight…’ Chi-32-Beta hissed. ‘And there are… other things, too… further away and getting closer… I… I don’t know what… who they are…’

  ‘How close are we to Jupiter?’

  ‘We are approaching the Caul. I can… feel sensors looking deep into the void. They may offer no sanctuary. They may end us.’

  Mersadie paused. Around her she could hear the calls of the people crowding the command deck.

  ‘We have to reach Jupiter. Can we outrun them?’

  ‘This is a tertiary-grade system freighter. They… they are likely to outclass us in both speed and power output.’

  ‘Is there an alternative?’ she asked.

  Chi-32-Beta paused.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then we try to run hard and hope,’ she said. ‘Hold on, and get ready.’

  The enginseer coughed what might have been an assent.

  ‘I… doubt we will survive, but… there is a probability that we might,’ Chi-32-Beta began. ‘You are… the prisoner, are you not?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  The enginseer was silent for a moment.

  ‘Thank you.’

  She blinked for a second, not certain how to reply. She stood.

  ‘Thank me if we live.’

  Luna

  The torpedo wave hit the edge of the assault fleet. Defence turrets opened fire. Las-beams and shells punched through warheads. Explosions bubbled out as the torpedoes detonated. Multicoloured spheres formed and burst in a foam of fire. Ordnance had loosed from launch platforms and the Luna picket fleets in a coordinated barrage lasting twenty-one minutes. It struck the hulls of Abaddon’s vanguard ships.

  The armada had no advantage of surprise. Word had come from the White Scars Falcon fleets that had harried it all the way down the path of its descent. The Lunar defences were ready and primed. The old face of grey-silver, which had looked down on autumn harvest and winter snow, hid beneath the scars and growths of tens of thousands of years of human occupation. Girding Luna was the Ring, a great hoop of stone and metal spiked with docks and gun bastions. Ancient field generators and gravitic stabilisers held it steady and true. In its shadow lay the Circuit, a trench cut into the surface of the moon as though gouged by a god’s chisel. Towers and domes dotted its surface. These were the fortresses of the Silent Sisters, and the Naval dynasties founded after the Pacification of Luna.

  The moon had once been the birthplace of the Legions. The gene-looms of the Selenar had taken the genius born in the Emperor’s laboratories and brought forth the armies of the Great Crusade. Millions of youths had entered its Halls of Making. Hundreds of thousands had emerged as the warriors of the new age. Space Marines. That time, though, had passed as the Crusade had progressed far beyond the bounds of Sol’s light.

  The gene-looms and their keepers had decayed and fallen from use and power. Luna had taken up a new role as base for the fleet and forces that watched over Terra. Here the Silent Sisterhood had made its fortress, the Assassin clades their training temples, and the Knights Errant and Chosen of the Sigillite their unnamed base of operations. But the true strength of Luna lay in the defences that spiralled out from the Ring in overlapping arcs. Its guns could target anything that moved into Terra’s orbit. Before the war, it had the firepower to deal with any invasion that might reach the Throneworld. Five years of Rogal Dorn’s care had add
ed to that strength many times over. Here, moving amongst the defences, were ships of the Jovian fleets, the Imperial Fists, the Blood Angels, the Saturnine flotillas and the steelclads of Neptune.

  On the other side of Terra lay the Phalanx, holding orbit above the world like a golden shadow to Luna’s silver. A school of lesser ships clustered around the great fortress, glimmering like coins cast into a sunbeam.

  Abaddon had known what was waiting for him. The data supplied to Horus by the XX Legion had told him much, and distant optical analysis had supplied the rest. His was an armada of the finest ships under Horus’ control, crewed and filled by the greatest of the XVI Legion, but still it would not be enough to break through Luna and take the skies of Terra. Not enough by far. That would take a force many times greater than that which now rode down into the guns of Luna.

  This strike, deep within the circle of the Solar System, was a spear thrust against a cliff. If it struck home, it would shatter. It was a death mission, a task that could bring glory only to fanatics like Layak who craved martyrdom. Yet here he stood, listening to the War Oath shiver as it plunged down into the fire.

  ‘Do you trust me, my son?’ Horus had said when he had given Abaddon command of the attack.

  ‘Of course, sire,’ he had replied and bowed his head. It had been difficult even for him to stand in his father’s presence. Light folded into shadow around the Warmaster, and voices whispered in the silence.

  ‘You are my truest son, Abaddon, more like me than perhaps any other. I have never failed, and I will not now.’ Horus’ hand touched Abaddon’s shoulder. ‘You understand how to strike this blow, I know. You know what is needed and why. This alone I trust to you. And you will not fail me, my son.’

  Fire swallowed the tip of the armada. A ship died, and then another, and another. Torpedoes punched through armour and exploded. Metal skin became shrapnel. Black vacuum became bright flame. Abaddon watched and heard the oaths of his Legion brothers fill his ears, their last signals arriving seconds after the light of their deaths.