Angel Exterminatus

by Graham McNeill

  Soulaka led them past a table heaped with rubble that Kroeger at first mistook for debris come loose from the walls until he saw the grey-coloured blocks being used to represent companies of warriors and artillery.

  ‘We refight battles from the past,’ said Soulaka. ‘Ours and those of our brothers, to learn from their mistakes and improve our tactical protocols.’

  Through the broad shoulders of the legionaries gathered around the table Kroeger saw a lovingly fashioned representation of a great tower, surrounded by more numbered blocks of units, this time coloured black.

  ‘Here, the warsmiths of the 34th and 88th Grand Battalions are refighting the siege of Dulan,’ said Soulaka with a grin, ‘though I hope they will not come to blows like their historical counterparts. There is the Iron Citadel of the Auretian Technocracy, where we have found that by committing Angron much earlier to the fight, the butcher’s bill would have been much reduced. For the Sons of Horus, at any rate.’

  He gestured to a third table. ‘And there we have a recent acquisition – the battle at the Perfect Fortress, a defeat suffered by our brothers of the Third Legion despite aid from the Lord of Iron in the planning of its architecture.’

  Kroeger stopped to admire the representation of the Perfect Fortress laid out on the great stone-rimmed hololith. Civil structures and fortifications were one and the same, with each portion of architecture a bastion of defence, a strongpoint and habitation in equal measure. While the walls and buildings were built with what looked like aesthetic considerations uppermost in the warmason’s mind, the roads and infrastructure were clearly the work of a more pragmatic individual.

  ‘The population are shields,’ said Kroeger, scanning the city for weakness.

  ‘Or civil defence forces, depending on your point of view,’ said Soulaka.

  ‘They’re meat shields,’ said Kroeger. ‘But whoever designed it that way is an idiot.’

  A ghost of movement, and Kroeger felt perfumed breath at his ear.

  ‘The Phoenician himself designed it,’ said Lucius, with a too-intimate hand brushing Kroeger’s neck as he slid around him. ‘Are you saying my primarch is an idiot?’

  Kroeger threw off Lucius’s hand, and fought the urge to rip the smug bastard’s head off. He felt the solid presence of Barban Falk at one shoulder and Forrix at the other, taking a measure of pride that they stood with him. To attack Lucius would be a mistake, for numerous reasons, and the swordsman knew it. Kroeger swallowed his anger and nodded towards the Perfect Fortress.

  ‘It’s a flawed strategy to rely on the compassion of your enemies,’ he said. ‘This city depends on the attackers being afraid to target the populace. That wouldn’t be a consideration if I was leading the attack.’

  ‘Imperial forces don’t think like you do,’ said Lucius, and Kroeger watched the play of scar tissue on the swordsman’s face. Many of his wounds were poorly sealed or deliberately kept from healing properly. The effect must have been painful.

  ‘They will,’ said Kroeger. ‘Sooner than you think. And anyway, this “Perfect Fortress” fell, didn’t it? Wasn’t so perfect after all, eh?’

  ‘It fell, yes, but not through any failing of the design,’ said Lucius.

  ‘Then why did it fall?’ demanded Falk.

  ‘Because we had tired of it, and letting Corax and his monsters have it was more agreeable,’ said Lucius. ‘My Legion are warriors, not gaolers. We are not suited to be the custodians of conquered worlds, we leave that to other, less… vigorous Legions.’

  Kroeger laughed at the pettiness of the insult, and pushed past Lucius towards a vast topographical arena that was part physical representation, part holographic construction. It occupied the entire end of the chamber, a rendering of the mightiest fortress Kroeger had ever seen. It wasn’t a defence raised by mortal hands, it was the greatest landmass of a world, shaped by a mighty being to become the strongest, most revered and most implacable fastness in the galaxy. A masterwork of immense proportions, its complexity and functional beauty took Kroeger’s breath away.

  Though he had never once set eyes on this place, he knew it exactly for what it was.

  ‘The Imperial Palace,’ he said.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Soulaka. ‘A permanent fixture of the Dodekatheon.’

  A score of warriors surrounded the table, each one commanding some aspect of its defence or undoing. By their orders were holographic representations of grand armies sent into battle, numerically tagged divisions of tens of thousands advancing and retreating like blood-red surge tides as they laid siege to the Palace. Hecklers shouted advice to the combatants, yelling to indicate sudden assaults from hidden sally ports, portions of rampart left weakly defended, breaches to be exploited and gateways left broken by relentless artillery barrages.

  Yet for all the millions of Legion warriors and Army auxiliaries laying siege to the Imperial Palace, Kroeger already saw it was hopeless. The defenders were too entrenched, the walls too high, the defences too coordinated and the cunning of their construction too ingenious to overcome. Few of the attacking armies had a hope of getting over the walls, and most never would. Suggestions bombarded the attacking generals, ranging from the obvious – ‘More guns, more assaults!’ – to the ridiculous – ‘Fight harder!’

  Every suggestion that was acted upon was met and countered with ease, the warriors taking the role of defenders parrying and repulsing each attack with the bare minimum of effort. Watching their moves and countermoves, Kroeger recognised a pattern in their efforts that was entirely different from those in which he had trained.

  The warsmiths were defending the Palace with the tactics of another Legion.

  ‘They’re using Imperial Fists doctrines,’ said Kroeger.

  ‘Of course,’ said Soulaka, appearing at his side. ‘Dorn and his labourer Legion are the ones fortifying the Palace, so it makes sense to play by his rules.’

  ‘That’s not particularly inspiring,’ he said as yet another attack was swept from the Kathmandu precincts and an assault over the Dhawalagiri elevation was repulsed with terrifying losses. Casualties were in the hundreds of thousands.

  ‘I agree,’ said Soulaka. ‘But our armies outnumber the defenders ten to one. Eventually they will get in.’

  Kroeger shook his head. ‘Perhaps, but whoever is left standing in the Palace will be master of the largest ruin on Terra,’ he said.

  ‘You think you could do better?’ said a voice behind him.

  All conversation ceased as the Lord of Iron emerged from the shadows, resplendent in his full battle armour and with Forgebreaker harnessed across his back. The cybernetic interfaces across his scalp shimmered in the torchlight and his melancholic features were hooded and dark. Fulgrim’s ermine cloak hung from his shoulders, the fastening skull gleaming and the inset gemstone streaked with numerous golden lines.

  ‘My lord,’ said Forrix. ‘We did not know you were here.’

  ‘Clearly,’ said Perturabo as the Iron Circle emerged from the shadows behind him. Forrix was amazed that the primarch’s shield bearers had been able to infiltrate the prow space without anyone hearing the heavy footfalls of their approach. The bulky armoured battle robots flanked the primarch as he made a slow circuit of the Palace table. He shook his head as though disappointed at his warriors’ lack of ambition and vision. His cold blue eyes scanned the frozen positions of the armies laying siege to the Palace and his lips pressed into a thin line at what he saw.

  Kroeger watched the primarch’s displeasure, and remembered why he had been brought into the Trident.

  ‘Yes, I think I could do better,’ he said.

  Perturabo looked up, and said, ‘You think you could take what your fellow warsmiths have so spectacularly failed to capture?’

  ‘I do,’ said Kroeger.

  ‘Then you are either a fool or extremely gifted.’

  ‘Perhaps a little of both.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Perturabo. ‘Restore the battle simulation to baseline. Begin aga
in, and this time Warsmith Kroeger will assume the mantle of assault command. All other parameters to be the same. Begin.’

  Perturabo stepped back from the holographically enhanced model as the dead returned to life, and the fictive armies withdrew. Kroeger shook his head and pointed a mailed fist at him.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not all parameters will be the same.’

  ‘What would you change, my bold triarch?’ asked Perturabo, leaning on the edge of the table and letting the green shimmer from the table’s hard-light projectors illuminate his face with a spectral glow.

  ‘I don’t want to fight warriors following another primarch’s stratagems.’

  ‘Then who would you fight?’

  ‘I want to fight you,’ said Kroeger. ‘I want to see what happens when Perturabo defends the Emperor’s Palace.’

  The apothecarion was silent, and Cadmus Tyro was reluctant to break that silence with his words, but who else could he talk to? In truth, the chamber had long since ceased to be a place of healing. Now it was a tomb, wreathed in the chill of the grave and used only to inter a brave man whose wounds should have seen him dead thrice over.

  He sat beside Ulrach Branthan’s casket, with his hand resting on the frosted glass surface. Haptic sensors registered the cold and measured the contained energies of the stasis field within, but there was no sensation beyond what the augmetics were telling him. His bionic replacement was more sensitive, more receptive and stronger than the limb that had been cut from him so long ago, but he found he now missed the reassuringly organic feel of his hands.

  Strange that a memory of flesh should come to him here, where flesh was by far the most redundant material present. His own body was over sixty per cent mechanised: his legs, one arm, his lungs and a significant portion of his cardiovascular system. A phage-cell infection received from a leucotoxic bio-pathogen while clearing out the Galieanic Cluster had seen to that. Not that he had minded at the time, of course, only the truly favoured were able to leave the weaknesses of the body behind so swiftly and so completely. Only Vermanus Cybus matched Tyro in chimeric bio-modifications, but Cybus had long been viewed as pathological in his reverence for the machine and loathing for flesh.

  In truth, Cybus was a warrior not even his battle-brothers could be around for any length of time, for his adherence to the doctrines of augmetic superiority had already spread through the Legion even before the death of Ferrus Manus and his warning against such beliefs to the Iron Fraternity.

  Garuda felt Tyro’s disquiet and rubbed its metallic head against the rasped skin of his neck as if to comfort him. Where the steel of Tyro’s augmetic arm joined with his shoulder was a flexing mass of integrated tissue that webbed in a fine mesh with the base of his neck. It itched abominably, but the analgesics that normally soothed the irritation of the skin had all been requisitioned for the operation of Branthan’s casket.

  ‘Easy, the captain will be restored to us,’ said Tyro, aware he was addressing his words to a bird that could not answer him. He corrected himself. A bird that chose not to answer him. Garuda and Ulrach Branthan were boon companions, and it had often seemed as though they had spoken via some invisible communion.

  ‘Ah, Ulrach, you’ve got me talking to this damn machine of yours,’ he said, tapping his fingers on the glass in a rhythmic tattoo. ‘It’s been as loyal as any of us, I’ll give it that.’

  No answer was forthcoming from his captain, not had he expected one. Apothecary Tarsa had suggested that it might help Branthan if he were to hear familiar voices around him, providing a link between the frozen world he now occupied and the world of warmth above. They had taken it in turns since Isstvan to come to the apothecarion to speak to their former captain and give voice to the trivialities of the day, the operations they had planned and the fears they had for the coming war.

  Tyro suspected the Salamander’s suggestion was more for the living than the living dead.

  Since breaching the outer regions of the great warp storm, Varuchi Vohra had been as good as his word, guiding the Sisypheum between its squalls and immaterial thunderheads with a deft and subtle hand. Breaching so dangerous a storm would normally have made for a juddering, nightmare-filled voyage, but the eldar Paths Below had kept them from the worst side effects of so dangerous a journey. Even the Geller fields were unnecessary, though Tyro had kept them raised anyway.

  Vohra assured him they were making good time, but it was impossible to know for sure. Every auspex reading was garbled nonsense that registered only impossible spikes of tortured physical reality and every chronometer aboard the ship had either ceased functioning or skittered randomly forwards and back in time.

  Truly, this was a realm of impossibility.

  And they were flying straight into the heart of it.

  ‘I’ll be honest, Ulrach, I don’t know what I’m doing,’ said Tyro, shaking his head. ‘They look to me to have the answers, but I don’t have any to give them. You were always the captain who saw the bigger picture; I was just a line warrior with a title. I don’t know if you have any connection to the ship now, but we’re about as far from anywhere sane as I could ever imagine. If you can believe it, we’re taking an eldar at his word and letting him guide the Sisypheum into the largest warp rift I’ve ever known, chasing down some wild story of ancient gods and doomsday weapons. You’d have put a bolt through that eldar’s head as soon as look at him, and we’d be back doing something useful.’

  Tyro paused as Garuda hopped from his shoulders to land on the edge of the casket. The bird preened as it walked the length of the icy container, and Tyro wondered if it knew why its former master wasn’t coming out.

  ‘It’s all gone to hell, Ulrach. We’re fighting the bastards, I swear we’re all fighting them, and we’re doing some good too. And we’re not alone any more; we’ve made contact with twenty-five other fighting cells. We’re cutting enemy supply lines, denying them easy passage. We’ve broken their communications and killed thousands of traitors. Our kill ratio is higher than ever, but I just don’t know if it’s enough. I don’t know what the primarch would do, and that… that… scares me.’

  The admission shocked Cadmus Tyro, for he had long since imagined himself purged of that crippling emotion. Fear was what lesser mortals endured. Decades of training, psycho-conditioning and iron discipline had made his psyche impervious to the mind-killer. Tyro had faced monstrous alien beings, hordes of greenskins intent on carving him up with motorised cleavers and shrieking aethereal horrors that pushed through the barrier between warpspace and reality.

  He had faced all these and more without fear, yet the yawning uncertainty of their future had all but unmanned him.

  ‘Should we go back to Terra, regroup with the rest of the Legions? Or should we stay out here, because we’re actually fighting, actually killing the enemy? We’re the Shattered Legions, and we’re hurting them, but are we hurting them enough to matter? I don’t know, and I don’t know how to fight without certainty. You and the primarch gave us that certainty, but where do we go from here?’

  His iron fingers curled into a fist.

  ‘Asirnoth’s blood – we need you, Ulrach,’ said Tyro, opening his fingers and slamming his palm down onto the glass. The stasis field shimmered and buzzed as the casket registered the impact. A warning chime sounded, and a red light winked to life on the thermostatic controls.

  Garuda took to the air with an angry blurt of binary that sent a spike of pain lancing into his skull. Tyro sat back, suddenly nervous. Had he disrupted some vital system? He didn’t know. Should he send for Atesh Tarsa?

  The red light winked out, and Tyro exhaled a sigh of relief. The very idea of something changing within a stasis field was patently ludicrous.

  ‘You see? Emotion. We’re all at breaking point, Ulrach,’ said Tyro, getting up and pacing the length and breadth of the chamber. ‘Ever since Ferrus… since Isstvan, we’ve been fraying at the edges, unravelling, and I don’t know how to stop it. We’re losing what made us
great, Ulrach. The iron will at the heart of us, it’s, I don’t know, it’s rusting or coming apart.’

  Cadmus Tyro stopped at the end of Branthan’s casket and leaned forwards, resting his elbows on the bevelled edges, letting the frustration of months of isolated warfare in the north bleed out of him in a juddering sigh.

  ‘This isn’t the kind of war I was made for,’ he said. ‘I’ll fight it, and we’ll bloody the foe, but can we win it? I’m not sure.’

  Only the hum of machinery and the skitter of claws on the casket’s lid disturbed the silence. Tyro stared at the blurred outline of the man he had followed into battle a hundred times and more, a lifeless effigy of life instead of life itself. A corpse frozen in time, just waiting for some distant archaeotechnician to dig him from an exposed glacier.

  ‘You know, I think these are the longest conversations we’ve ever had,’ he said. ‘If you weren’t in that casket, I don’t think you’d have listened to half of what I’m saying. You’d have slammed me into that wall and told me to get a grip of myself. You’d have said that I was a fool to let the weakness of flesh rule my thinking. And you’d be right to do it.’

  Garuda tapped its silver beak against the glass, and Tyro straightened with a soft chuckle that utterly belied his grim mood.

  ‘You’re right,’ said Tyro. ‘Let’s go, the captain needs his rest.’

  He hammered his fist against the battle-scored metal of his plastron and held out his arm for the mechanised eagle to hop on. The bird backed away from him, and tapped its beak on the glass again. He beckoned to the eagle, but the bird steadfastly refused to come to him. Its moods – if mechanised confections could be said to have moods – were often inexplicable, but this was obstinate even for it.

  ‘Come here,’ he said. ‘Now.’

  The bird didn’t move.

  Tyro reached for it, but Garuda pecked at him, and its beak crackled with electrical discharge as it made contact, cutting the iron of Tyro’s gauntlet like an energised blade. He snatched his hand back, but before he could give voice to an angry curse, he saw what had drawn the bird’s attention.