by John French
It was wasteful and brutal but it had a chance of succeeding. It must have worked so far, thought Tyr.
‘Thirty seconds,’ said the voice again. Tyr blink-clicked an acknowledgement and opened a general communication channel to the rest of the strike force.
‘Brothers,’ he said. Across the chamber all movement ceased. His words would take longer to reach the squads on the other ships, but when they did hush and stillness would spread through launch bays and crew compartments. He had not considered what he would say. All his life had been war. Every moment since he had left the hive sumps of Nord Merica had been training, fighting, and pushing forward the bounds of the Imperium step by bloody step. He was not a man made to craft words, but they came to him then, as if something long wasted within him stirred to life.
‘We are fighting a war. Not a war of conquest, not the war we were made to fight, but a war for the oaths we made and the blood we shed to make the Imperium. We will never see the end of this war, but if by our deeds we can bring that end a step closer, if our deaths cost the enemy a hundredfold, then the future will remember us.’ He paused, felt the electric charge thickening against his skin. The machines were keening. Arcs of garish light played over the platform. Tyr brought his bronze-headed mace up to his face plate and closed his eyes.
‘To the glory of the primarch and the Emperor,’ said Tyr. The machines howled. A rolling flash of sickly light filled his vision and oblivion took him.
The cry made me turn. Calio Lezzek lay on the white marble of the command platform in a pool of his green robes. The last time I had seen him he had seemed on the edge of death, but somehow he had managed to walk to the bridge. I moved towards him, the projection of Tyr’s attack on the Iron Blood momentarily forgotten behind me.
The old man was shaking. Fresh blood ran from his eye sockets, repainting over brown stains. His lips were bright wet red in a parchment-pale face. His silver-tipped cane rattled on the smooth marble as he tried to stand. He slipped and started to fall again, and I caught his arm as he fell.
Lezzek was feather-light but I nearly dropped him as I touched him. It felt as if I had plunged my hand into hot acid. I blanked the feeling out and lifted him slowly to his feet. Deck officers and attendants were clustering around now. Behind me the battle spun on, forgotten and unattended.
‘Master Lezzek,’ I said. He did not reply. His body was shaking, fingers opening and closing. A thick red trickle ran down his chin. His lips were moving and a wheezing sound was coming from his mouth. ‘Master Lezzek,’ I tried again, but he did not seem to know that I was there. ‘Calio,’ I said, and his head turned.
‘I can feel it reaching towards us,’ he gasped. ‘I can see it, coming through the storm. Terra, it is burning.’ He moaned and shivered. ‘How can such…’ but the question died in his throat. His head arched back. I heard a crunch of bone. His mouth opened as if he was screaming but he made no sound. White-hot pain filled my hand where I held his arm.
He lifted off the floor, his flesh glowing from within as if his blood was on fire. He looked like a carcass suspended on a hook, arms and legs still twitching as they dangled. My grip broke, and the palm of my gauntlet was dark red with heat where I had held him. Ash fell from the old man, hair and silk charring and flaking from skin. A roaring sound spilled out of Lezzek’s mouth, like air sucking through a furnace grate. A booming, hollow voice came from the burning man, speaking the message that was killing him.
‘Sons of Dorn, return to Terra. Return immediately. This is the will of Rogal Dorn, Praetorian of Terra.’ Lezzek’s floating body shimmered as if I was seeing it through a heat haze. His head snapped up, his empty eyes fixed on me. For a second I thought that he was trying to tell me something, that he was trying to give me another message in that blind look. Then he spoke again. ‘Return to Terra. This is the will of Rogal Dorn.’ His lips blackened, and bright yellow flames poured out of his mouth and wreathed his head. His thin flesh blistered and boiled. For a second he was a black silhouette of a man at the centre of an inferno. Then the shape collapsed into a heap of embers and the flames vanished.
My mouth was dry. Return to Terra. This is the will of Rogal Dorn. The words felt leaden, like chains fastening around my hands. I half heard the shouts of bridge officers, and the mechanical sound of servitors moving to douse the remains of Calio Lezzek that still smouldered at my feet.
Word from Terra. Astropathic messages require careful interpretation to sift meaning from the mystery of their dreamlike content. It can take days and even then not be clear. For a message to imprint so clearly and directly onto Lezzek’s mind it must have held staggering power. We had waited months for a message, for any message. Now we had it and it felt like a judgement of execution. I glanced back to the holo-projection where our fleet and the Iron Warriors met in battle. We were winning, I thought. We could deal a wound to the enemy so severe that the Iron Warriors might never recover.
This is the will of Rogal Dorn.
Withdrawal. Flight. The price would be terrible and even then those that did survive would be running to find a storm’s grave in the warp.
A human serf officer moved towards me, saluted. It was one of the communication officers. Interface cables ran from the base of his skull to a sliding track on the roof above. His eyes were green slit augmetics. I nodded an acknowledgement.
‘My lord,’ he said, and I could hear the edge of fear in his voice. ‘Reports from all fleet elements. Most of the astropaths are dead, a few live… barely. They all spoke the same message before they died.’
I looked down at the scorched patch of marble. ‘Yes, we received the same message.’ To punch through the warp storms and kill a fleet’s worth of astropaths the message must have been less a sending, more a tidal surge of psychic energy. No matter how it had reached us, the message was undeniable, its meaning not open to doubt.
Has the war reached Terra already? The possibility filled my mind. What if the Iron Warriors were not the only new allies of Horus? What if Terra is falling and we are being called back as a last defence?
I thought of Tyr, of the force I had committed to a bold strike, and the hundred carefully balanced engagements spread across the battle sphere. The message was a blow more fatal, more carefully timed than any ambush. This battle would not end quickly; we could not continue and obey the urgency of the order. There was no neat way to unpick an engagement on such a scale. Withdrawal meant sacrifice.
I remembered a hand locked around mine, blood coating both. Helias’s eyes looked back into mine out of the ice cold of the distant past.
‘Navigator Primus Basus reports that a passage seems to have opened in the storms, though he is not sure it will last.’ The words chilled me. If we were to obey we had to go while there was a chance of making it through the storms. I saw the abyss opening below my brother, waiting, silent, and eternal.
This is the will of Rogal Dorn.
I had a choice between loyalty and victory. Withdraw and I committed us to a loss greater than anything our Legion had suffered.
The will of Rogal Dorn.
‘Alexis,’ my brother had said in a voice so low that it was almost lost on the wind. He was always stronger than me. His hand opened in my memory and the darkness reached up to swallow him.
‘Signal all fleet elements to withdraw and jump to the warp.’ I closed my eyes. The pain is how you know you are still alive. ‘We are returning to Terra.’
Tyr swept his mace down. The Iron Warrior managed to move at the last minute, and the blow hammered into his pauldron with a metallic thunderclap. Tyr could hear his own panting breath as he dropped his shoulder and rammed his weight forwards. The Iron Warrior stumbled. Tyr hit down, and felt the shock of impact through his armour. He could smell his own sweat, a thick and heavy stink inside his sealed battle plate. He hit twice more, heavy bludgeoning blows that left the Iron Warrior a bloody mound on the d
eck.
Beside him Timor slammed his storm shield forwards into the gap. Explosive rounds burst against its surface. Tyr brought his bolter up and fired into the space he had opened. They were in a corridor of dull metal barely wide enough for two of the Terminators to stand side by side. They had been fighting ever since they had materialised inside the Iron Blood; heaving, grinding warfare, fought with point-blank shots and grunting melees. The Iron Warriors gave no ground. The Imperial Fists had the advantage of numbers, but they were broken into a hundred small forces. As Tyr had expected, the inside of the ship was a labyrinth of defences: sentry guns, kill zones, and barricades manned by Iron Warriors who fought with brutal skill. Tyr had intermittent contact with the rest of the Imperial Fists on the Iron Blood, but he estimated that he had lost half already. Despite these losses they pressed forwards.
‘Fire wasp!’ shouted Timor. A bulky shape moved into view in front of them. Its curved armour plates were black with soot and striped with yellow chevrons. Blue pilot flames hissed at the tips of its weapon pods. A threat rune latched onto the machine, painting it angry red in Tyr’s eye. The fire wasp made a sound like an animal hiss and washed the corridor with liquid flame. Tyr’s helmet display dimmed, reducing his view to sun-bright patches of light and black silhouettes. Targeting runes hazed and pulsed in his sight as the heat baffled his armour’s sensors.
‘Navarra, clear the tunnel,’ shouted Tyr. Navarra came forwards, the barrels of his weapon already spinning to life. It was a new pattern of weapon, retrofitted to a few Terminator suits from the larger type fitted to Dreadnoughts.
Assault cannon. The designation was not new, but never before had a weapon owned the title so completely. Navarra moved past Tyr, fixed his stance, and levelled his weapon. The barrels keened as they rotated to a blur. The fire wasp came forwards, spraying flame. Navarra fired.
The torrent of glowing rounds hit the fire wasp head on. Its armour distorted under the deluge, buckling and cracking like paper in rain. A round hit a fuel tank and the corridor vanished in a fireball. Navarra kept the trigger depressed, panning the weapon across the burning corridor. Shell casings piled at his feet.
A sudden blast of static and garbled speech filled Tyr’s helmet. Someone was trying to signal them from outside of the Iron Blood. He tried to latch on to the signal but could hear only static. No matter, he thought. There is only one way for us to go.
Navarra’s assault cannon spun to silence, its barrels glowing red. The corridor in front of them was clear.
‘Forward,’ said Tyr; and they marched forward, towards the Iron Blood’s heart and towards Perturabo.
When it came, the order to withdraw spread like poison through the Imperial Fists fleet. The first to run were the smaller craft, the frigates, gunboats and strike cruisers. Alone or in small squadrons, a hundred and thirty of the proudest warships of the Imperium fled the sphere of battle. Every Imperial Fist on every ship knew what the fleet master was doing, and why; it was a judgement of who was most likely to survive. It was also a death sentence for those that remained.
Behind the fleeing ships their heavier cousins fired on the enemy with renewed fury. Rolling fire hit every Iron Warriors ship within range, clouding their sensors with a haze of energy as munitions detonated against void shields. It worked for a while, until the first of the Imperial Fists dropped into the warp. For a moment nothing changed. Then more of the fleeing ships vanished, and the Iron Warriors realised what was happening. They fell on the breaking Imperial Fists like starved jackals on wounded lions.
A second wave of Imperial Fists craft began to run for the system’s edge and the warp’s embrace. The Lacedaemon, the ship that had carried the first Imperial Fists beyond the Sol system, was the first to break away. Its captain, the obedient Iago, pushed his ship until its engines bled raw plasma. Twelve Iron Warriors ships ran him down, raking the Lacedaemon with constant fire. Its hull blasted to a twisted ruin, the Lacedaemon fired back on its killers until the last inch of its hull integrity gave out. Of the rest of the second wave of retreat, a handful made it to clear space and jumped to the warp. Most followed the Lacedaemon to death.
The Veritas began to fall. Scything blasts of fire cut its golden hull, slitting its skin open, spilling its guts into the planet’s atmosphere. Its remaining engines fired, trying to pull it from the planet’s grasp. Its killers fired again, shearing its engines from its body. It tumbled end over end as it surrendered to gravity, burning and shedding debris as it fell through the atmosphere.
It hit the ocean of Phall II like a hot iron plunged into a pool. Steam spewed into the air, spreading into a white anvil head. It took three seconds for the seawater to reach the plasma reactor. The wreck exploded, and a wave of glowing energy chased the tsunami already ripping out from the impact. White steam and black smoke bloomed out, mingled, clouding the atmosphere of the world like a cataract forming over a blue eye.
On the Contrador Golg hissed as he watched the image of the Veritas’s death. Its end was a fitting one for the sons of Rogal Dorn. But it was only a brief diversion, a kill of opportunity as he searched for his true target. He did not have to look far. There it was, standing defiant amidst a scattering of ships. Tribune: a name that carried so much of the arrogance and pretension of the Imperial Fists. His master had ordered him to kill the upstart commander of that ship who dared to stand against the Lord of Iron. He would do it, but there would be little satisfaction in the deed.
The battle had become a slaughter. The Imperial Fists were running. Squadrons of ships tried to keep the Iron Warriors at bay while the others made for clear space and the possibility of escape. Freed of the pressure of attacks, the Iron Warriors fell on them. Every passing instant saw another ship die under Iron Warriors guns. They simply hammered them into twisted metal and cooling slag. There was an abandon to it, a wasteful brutality that required no skill. But the Imperial Fists died just the same.
Golg felt nothing, no victory of superiority, just the bitter taste of blood from an enemy that had let himself die. This was supposed to be more than a massacre; it was supposed to be vindication, a proof of the lie of old pretensions and rivalry. Instead it had become simple butchery. Golg wondered if the primarch saw it in the same way, if his bitter anger was as terrible as Golg suspected.
Golg’s eyes narrowed on the Tribune. This kill would be terrifyingly easy, but he had to be sure that he completed his task, or risk his master’s anger.
‘Close on the target,’ he whispered. Officers and servitors moved to obey. ‘Cripple it and prepare for boarding.’ He had three hundred Iron Warriors on the Contrador alone, more than enough to bring Perturabo his prize.
I have killed us all. It was all I could think. The dying moments of thousands of my brothers clogged the holo-projection with blood-red light. I had tried to pick the battle apart, pulling elements back one at a time, diverting, covering, protecting. The Iron Warriors had felt the weakness and pressed their attack. The withdrawal had become an ugly brawling battle, then a rout, then a slaughter.
The enemy had hit the Tribune twice since the withdrawal had begun. Both had been substantial impacts. The bridge was a ruin. Half the human officers were dead. Fused cogitator units sparked and bled smoke. Air hissed from ragged punctures in the armoured shutters. Servitors hung from the cables linking them to their stations. Oil and blood poured from them onto the deck.
‘Three close proximity targets,’ shouted Raln. He was gripping the main ordnance dais, the body of its dead officer slumped at its side.
‘Fire on all targets,’ I said, my helmet amplifying my words over the sound of a dozen overlapping alarms. The ship shook and shook again as we fired. I had given the order to withdraw but I would not run until the last moment. The Tribune lay across the path of the onrushing Iron Warriors fleet. Beside us were two grand cruisers, a trio of battle cruisers, and twenty strike vessels. A substantial force, but it was a paper for
tress in the path of a storm.
‘Two targets hit,’ says Raln, his voice loud but calm. ‘Two more targets reaching close range. One reads as being of battle-barge displacement.’
‘Fire on damaged targets.’ I turned back to the projection of the battle. Blurring interference washed through it. I watched as some of our ships reached clear space and vanished into the warp. Too few, far too few. Even as I watched a mass of Iron Warriors ships broke three of ours into glowing debris. A fourth turned to fight and died even as it fired. I looked to the bloated threat marker of the Iron Blood.
‘Try and reach Captain Tyr again.’ There had been no word from Tyr since he launched his assault on the Iron Blood. The green-eyed signal officer was bleeding, half his face glossed in fresh blood, but he nodded and moved his fingers over his lectern.
‘Target hit,’ called Raln. ‘Fire inbound.’ The ship shook again. ‘Shields gone.’
‘We have a signal, lord.’ The signals officer was speaking into my ear via my helmet vox. A distortion-wracked voice filled my ears.
‘Fleet master,’ Tyr was shouting. I could hear a grating sound, like hail on a metal roof. It was the sound of gunfire ringing on his armour.
‘There is word from Terra. We are to return immediately.’ I heard a chop of static and a sound like a hammer striking a cracked bell. ‘I have given the order to withdraw. Pull your forces back and–’
‘To where? Pull back to where?’ Laughter edged Tyr’s voice. I looked at the battle projection, at the rune representing Halcyon trying to get clear of the centre of the Iron Warriors fleet. ‘I am not retreating, brother. I am going forwards. I am going to kill our enemy.’ He had always been headstrong, reckless even, and he had never liked me. I smiled at that moment.
‘Good luck, my friend,’ I said. For a second the only answer was the rain-patter ringing of Tyr’s armour.
‘And you, Alexis,’ he said and cut the link. I blinked, for a moment looking into the memory of Helias’s eyes as he prepared to let the abyss take him.
