The Chapters Due

by Graham McNeill

  It was a noble attempt to break the enemy, but against such numbers it never really had any chance of success. Uriel wracked his brains for a way to turn this battle around, but he could think of nothing.

  Gunsmoke filled the tomb, a choking acrid fog through which blocky shapes moved and spears of fire lanced back and forth. Glittering motes of light danced in the smoke, and Uriel caught an actinic, greasy sensation in the back of his throat, like the instant before a lightning strike. He pulled away from the sarcophagus as the blood-spattered carvings of Ultramarines in battle seemed to shimmer with the same bioluminescence as the cave beyond.

  He reached out, feeling the marble of the sarcophagus grow warm to the touch. A spectral mist oozed from the cracks in the stonework, pouring out as though a canister of blind gas was contained within.

  “What the—” began Pasanius, seeing the same thing.

  “What is this?” hissed Uriel. “Warpcraft?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Pasanius. “Look!”

  Uriel glanced around the edge of their cover, squinting through the smoky fog filling the tomb as every one of the sarcophagi pulsed with the same light. Wisps of ghostly mist poured from the damaged tombs like steam, twisting in the air like insubstantial tendrils.

  A thunderous gunshot ripped through the sound of bolters, and an Iron Warrior vanished in a fiery explosion of ceramite and flesh. Louder than any boltgun, the shot had the weight and echo of something much larger. Another shot rang out, followed by another, and two more Iron Warriors disintegrated in bloody explosions.

  A dozen shapes moved in the upper reaches of the tomb, obscured by the strange mist, yet with the unmistakable broad-shouldered bulk of Astartes. Uriel’s first thought was that these were Ultramarines reinforcements, but these half-glimpsed warriors were armoured in sable black ceramite, their plates bedecked in shimmering images of bones and skulls. The blue haze of the dome’s light made it hard to be certain, but Uriel swore that ethereal fire crackled around the feet of these warriors as they marched with funereal slowness down the tiered steps towards the battle.

  Their guns fired again, hurling blazing comets from their barrels and leaving bright contrails in their wake. Each shot saw an Iron Warrior slain, and Uriel’s heart leapt as the tide of the battle had suddenly changed. The enemy were taken by surprise, but they still had the edge in numbers. The outcome of the battle now hung on a knife-edge. All it needed was a push to tip it over.

  “This is our moment!” shouted Uriel. “For the Emperor and Roboute Guilliman!”

  Uriel vaulted the shimmering sarcophagus, his sword flaring to life as he charged towards the stunned Iron Warriors. Petronius Nero, Ancient Peleus and Livius Hadrianus followed him, and Pasanius led his remaining Firebrands. Inquisitor Suzaku, too badly hurt to charge, fired her pistol from behind the sarcophagus as Captain Shaan and three Raven Guard plunged into the shimmering fog pouring into the tomb.

  Uriel pounded across the tomb to where he had last seen Honsou, losing sight of his fellow warriors in his haste to confront his most hated foe. He blundered through the mist, colliding with an Iron Warrior in a clatter of armour. Uriel reacted first and swept his sword down through the traitor, cleaving him from shoulder to hip. The Iron Warrior fell, and Uriel saw a bolter gouge in his right shoulder. This was one of Honsou’s bodyguards, and as the mist parted for an instant, he saw the master of the Iron Warriors before him.

  Their eyes met, and Honsou gave him another of his infuriating grins.

  Before Uriel could make his move, a shape flowed from the shadows behind Honsou and leapt at the Iron Warrior.

  Even as the attacker struck, Uriel knew who it was.

  Ardaric Vaanes slammed into Honsou and bore him to the ground.

  The renegade Raven Guard spun to his feet, faster and more agile without his armour, yet horribly vulnerable in the face of Honsou’s lethal power. Honsou got to his feet just as Vaanes sent a lethal chopping blade of a hand to his face. Honsou lowered his head and turned to the side. Vaanes’ blow struck the mass of metal on the side of his face. Rolling with the impact, Honsou went low and drove a thunderous uppercut into Vaanes’ belly.

  Vaanes bunched the muscles in his stomach enough to keep his internal organs intact, but was still driven staggering back by the force of the blow. Honsou followed up with a brutal kick to the thigh that drove Vaanes to his knees in pain.

  “What did you think, Vaanes?” roared Honsou, driving a fist into Vaanes’ spine. “That you could just turn your back on me?”

  Vaanes pulled himself along the floor, but Honsou followed him, driving kicks into his ribs and fists into his head. Honsou’s fury was monstrous, and Uriel was tempted to leave Vaanes to his fate, but that was not the Ultramarines way.

  Vaanes had saved his life in the fight with Grendel, and even if he were to meet his end at the hands of his former battle-brothers, it was a better death than this.

  “I made you!” roared Honsou. “I should have killed you when I found you skulking in that shithole you called sanctuary. Grendel wanted to do it, and I should have let him.”

  Uriel dropped to the ground behind Honsou and said, “Grendel is dead.”

  He swung his sword for Honsou’s neck, but the Iron Warrior was quicker than Uriel expected. The silver arm he had taken from Pasanius came up and Uriel’s blade cut into its brilliantly reflective surface. It bit a handspan, but no further. Honsou met Uriel’s angry gaze with one of wry amusement.

  “So Grendel’s dead?” said Honsou. “Saves me the bother of killing him.”

  He wrenched his arm back, taking Uriel’s sword with it and slammed a brutal jab into Uriel’s face. It was like being hit by a Dreadnought, and Uriel staggered back from the blow. Honsou pulled the sword from his arm, which rippled like mercury and closed up over the wound as though it never existed. He hurled Uriel’s sword away to the back of the tomb.

  “Always with the duel,” said Honsou. “I told you I don’t fight like that.”

  “No, you get others to fight for you. Others to die for you,” said Uriel through broken teeth and blood.

  “Best way to stay alive,” said Honsou slamming a fist into the weaker armour at Uriel’s stomach. The plate cracked, but the ancient armour of Brother Amadon held firm. “You should try it sometime, except there won’t be any other times for you.”

  An arm curled around Honsou’s throat thick and powerfully muscled. Honsou was hauled back, and Uriel recognised the raven tattoo on the deltoid muscle of his attacker. Honsou easily tore Vaanes’ arm from around his neck, hauling the battered warrior around before him. Holding onto Vaanes’ arm, he pushed the Raven Guard to the ground and planted his foot in his chest.

  “This is where we part company, Vaanes,” said Honsou. “Let’s see you fly away now.”

  With horrifying ease, Honsou ripped Vaanes’ arm from its socket. Blood poured from the torn shoulder, a spray of crimson arcing across the remains of Ventanus’ tomb. Vaanes roared in pain, but that was cut short as Honsou stamped down on his bare chest. The ossified shield protecting Vaanes’ internal organs shattered and long, dagger-like shards of bone pierced his heart and lungs.

  Uriel threw himself at Honsou, but the Iron Warrior had been expecting the move. He grabbed Uriel and spun around, using his own momentum to slam him against a nearby sarcophagus. He felt his body break, and bit back a scream of pain.

  Honsou loomed over him as the booming echoes of the mysterious attackers’ weapons felled another group of Iron Warriors. An explosion slammed into the tomb next to Uriel and Honsou flinched as a blizzard of stone fragments sprayed them. A giant figure in blue-black armour emerged from the smoke, a giant bearing a golden bolter and with an emerald cloak billowing behind it.

  It fired once, and Honsou raised a warding arm as he was punched from his feet by the enormous impact. He slammed into the ground and skidded over onto his side. Blood poured from a great gouge torn in his chest. Uriel tried to get to his feet, but the pain was too
great. The giant figure reached down and Uriel felt the heat of its nearness, as though the flames slowly appearing on the plates of his armour were those that had escaped the inferno raging within his flesh.

  Uriel looked into the visor of this giant, seeing an azure light burning there that spoke of ancient heroism and noble deeds of valour beyond anything Uriel could comprehend. This warrior was unlike the others that had come to their aid, for his armour retained traces of its former allegiance, gold trims, a pale eagle on the shoulder and a faded, barely legible, inverted omega symbol. In the centre of the “U” was the symbol for a captain, but it was old, ancient even, a standard of rank insignia that had not been used for ten thousand years.

  “It’s you, isn’t it?” said Uriel. “I mean…”

  The figure leaned into him and a ghostly whisper passed between them, a word or a name, Uriel couldn’t be sure. He didn’t even know if it had been said aloud or whether it simply appeared in his mind. Whatever it was, it meant nothing to him, but when the figure pressed the dagger with which he’d killed the Newborn into his hand, Uriel realised what he had been told.

  “I understand,” he said, now knowing the real reason M’kar had sent Honsou to this place.

  The spectral figure nodded, and Uriel felt its potent sense of a duty discharged, a burden and a responsibility passed on, as though it had been waiting for this since the moment of its death.

  Uriel pushed himself onto his side, grimacing as torn muscles pulled and cracked bones protested. Pasanius and his two surviving Firebrands marched towards him, while Apothecary Selenus tended to a terrible wound in Livius Hadrianus’ stomach. Brutus Cyprian watched over his friend, clutching his own shattered kneecap while Peleus helped him remain upright. Petronius Nero propped Inquisitor Suzaku against a sarcophagus and bound her wounds as best he was able. The inquisitor’s skin was ashen, and she looked around the tomb as though unable to believe what she had just witnessed.

  Aethon Shaan limped onto the floor of the tomb, and Uriel nodded his thanks and relief to the captain of the Raven Guard. He looked to the upper reaches of the tiers, searching for any sign of their spectral allies. There was no sign of them, nor had he expected to find any. They had vanished as suddenly as they had arrived, leaving only ruptured Iron Warriors corpses behind, and that was good enough for Uriel.

  He turned back to the giant warrior, and wasn’t surprised to find him gone. The words he had spoken remained indelibly etched in Uriel’s mind, impossible to forget and laden with echoes of ancient days. He looked at the flint-bladed dagger in his hand and knew what he had to do with that knowledge.

  Pasanius gave him a hand up and nodded to the far side of the tomb.

  “One last thing left to do,” he said.

  Uriel nodded and turned to face Honsou. The Warsmith of the Iron Warriors hauled himself upright, his chest plate cracked and blackened, and his skin ravaged with scars from the blast that had felled him.

  He looked up at the warriors facing him and grimaced.

  “You look as bad as I feel,” he told Uriel.

  “This is where you die,” said Pasanius.

  “Perhaps,” agreed Honsou. “But if you think I’m going to let you kill me, think again.”

  “Your warriors are dead,” said Uriel. “There is no escape for you. It’s over.”

  “Maybe so,” said Honsou, holding up the detonation trigger for the demolition charges wired throughout the tomb. “But who said anything about escape?”

  And the world lit up in fire and thunder.

  TWENTY-TWO

  SCIPIO HURLED HIMSELF into the traitor Astartes, his sword chopping through a howling berserker’s breastplate as his pistol blew out another’s helmet. Coltanis unleashed a blinding streak of plasma, and Helicas let loose a blazing volley of heavy bolter shells before slinging the weapon in favour of his combat blade. Nivian fought at Scipio’s side, keeping his vulnerable flank towards his sergeant.

  The warriors of the 2nd Company slammed into the enemy with the cold fury reserved only for traitors. These warriors represented the very worst of what had become of the Astartes since the dark days of the Great Betrayal. Worse than the traitors who fell to darkness in those times, these warriors knew the cost of what they embraced, yet took that road anyway.

  They deserved no mercy, and they would receive none at the hands of the Ultramarines.

  Captain Sicarius led the way, hacking a path through the mass of ceramite-clad warriors with the passion of a zealot. His blade was a crimson slash in the world, reaping souls with every sweep. Only the berserkers stood in his way, too blinded by their rage and frenzy to know better. The Claws of Lorek and those few Bloodborn warriors not quick enough to flee the charge of the Ultramarines moved aside for Sicarius, knowing better than to stand before him when he had been marked for death by the Corsair Queen.

  She leapt from the prow of her skiff as a slew of missiles slammed into it. The first three exploded against the energy field. It blew out with a squealing bang of overload, and the remaining warheads punched through the thin skin of the skiff and ripped it apart from the inside. The wreckage collapsed to the cobbled ground, a twisted mess of mangled metal with the prow section jutting up towards the sky like the last sight of a sinking ship.

  Kaarja Salombar turned in a graceful somersault, firing her pistol as she pirouetted gracefully through the air. Two Ultramarines went down, molten craters where their faces used to be. Salombar’s pistol was of antique design, but fired lethal bolts of bright green energy. She landed before Sicarius, an exquisitely curved and graceful woman clad in lacquered leather armour, coloured plates and spiked shoulder guards. Her blue hair swept out behind her like a comet’s tail, and her heart-shaped face was feline and graceful.

  A host of warriors in brightly coloured, patchwork uniforms rushed to her side, each armed with a crackling sword with a curved blade and combination punch dagger and pistol.

  They were big, fast men, gene-bulked for strength and augmented for resilience. Writhing tattoos covered every portion of their skin, and Scipio saw the rippling haze of energy fields clinging to their bodies.

  “I’ve waited too long for this,” said Sicarius, and hurled himself towards the Corsair Queen. She met him, blade to blade, and right away Scipio saw she was the faster. The tip of her sword slipped around the tempest blade and buried itself in the gap between Sicarius’ breastplate and pauldron. She spun away to avoid his return stroke and ducked a riposte meant to remove her head, It was like trying to catch smoke, her movements so inhumanly swift that not even Astartes reflexes could match them.

  She danced around Sicarius, and though he was a superlative swordsman, she made him look clumsy and uncoordinated, like the rawest recruit ever to come to Macragge. Scipio tore his gaze from the duel as one of the Corsair Queen’s followers came for him.

  He turned aside the slashing sabre and spun away as the punch dagger followed it up. He fired his pistol into the man’s face, but a blaze of light erupted from the impact point, leaving his target unharmed. Scipio’s momentary surprise almost cost him his life, as the punch dagger stabbed into the weaker, damaged sections of his armour and ripped into his side. He twisted away before the pistol element could fire, and the bullet was deflected away. Scipio slammed his weapon into the man’s face, a pugnacious and scarred mess of tattoos and steel piercings. Energy shield or not, the powerful impact hurled him back and Scipio took a two-handed grip on his pistol and unloaded a full clip into the man.

  Furious energy squalled from his shield with each bolt, but eventually its protection was stripped away and Scipio’s bolts perforated the corsair and tore his upper body to shredded chunks. All around him, the corsairs and traitor Astartes were swarming over them with passionate war cries, but the Ultramarines were continuing their push. Passion was all very well, but it met its match in the disciplined, unbending precision of the Ultramarines.

  Nivian kept back from the swirling melee, knowing he could not hope to surv
ive with only one arm and no blade. Coltanis fired short bursts of his plasma gun, the coils now close to exhaustion, and Helicas simply bludgeoned his enemies with the solid mass of the heavy bolter. Scipio had never been prouder of his men, though it grieved him that so few had survived to see victory within their grasp.

  He reloaded his pistol and glanced over to where the Lions of Macragge fought in the orbit of their captain. Prabian cut down enemies without effort, his blows clinical and cold and lethal. Daceus fought with his dogged determination never to fail, while Malcian kept the corsairs overwhelming numbers back with controlled bursts of his flamer.

  Vandius fired his pistol while keeping the banner of the 2nd flying, and Scipio saw the blow that would fell him a moment before it landed. The Corsair Queen vaulted over Sicarius’ head, firing her pistol into his back and driving him to his knees. Salombar landed beside Vandius, and before the standard bearer could turn to face this new enemy, she slashed her sword clean through his shoulder.

  She scissor kicked him in the chest and spun away to face Sicarius, who had risen to his feet in a rage. Scipio saw them throw themselves at one another, but his attention was fixed on the banner. Vandius recoiled from the Corsair Queen’s sudden assault, watching in horror as the arm clutching the banner fell away from his body.

  “No!” yelled Vandius, his voice brittle with horror.

  Scipio understood in a heartbeat that his anguish was not for his injury, but for the fact he had lost his grip on the banner.

  Its ebony haft and rippling fabric fell as though in slow motion, and Scipio was moving even before he was consciously aware of it. A corsair moved to intercept him, but he battered him out of the way and skidded under a sword blow as he slid across the ground towards the falling banner. His fingers gripped the pole and he rolled onto his side, whipping it upright as the fabric came within millimetres of touching the ground. A trio of corsairs ran at him, realising the prize he bore, but Scipio was on his feet now, taking aim at the closest. A bolt blew out the back of the corsair’s skull, but his pistol jammed before he could fire again.