The Ultramarines Omnibus

by Graham McNeill

  Joaniel tried not to be too hurt at Ardelia’s remark, but supposed she did. The weight of responsibility and too many bad memories had aged her prematurely and though she still met her order’s physical fitness requirements and could field strip a bolter in less than forty seconds, she knew that a life of moving from war to war had made her features melancholy.

  The war on Remian IV had been the worst she had ever seen: screaming men begging for a merciful death rather than endure such pain. The stench of blood, voided bowels, antiseptic fluids and the acrid reek of war had stayed with her long after the war there had been won.

  She remembered the months of counselling she had given the soldiers after the battle, bringing many of them back from the horror of their experiences on Remian. In response to her soothing words and gentle manner, the soldiers had dubbed her the Angel of Remian and that name had followed her since then. She had saved hundreds, if not thousands, of lives on Remian, but in the end, there had been no one there to soothe the horrors in her own head.

  In her dreams she would find herself back there, weeping as she clamped a spraying artery, fighting to save a faceless soldier’s life as he screamed and clawed at her with broken fingers. Severed limbs and the choking tang of burned human meat still filled her senses and every night she would wake with a pleading scream on the edge of her lips.

  Joaniel thought of returning to her bare cell above the wards, but the prospect of such emptiness was too much for her to deal with right now.

  ‘I shall offer a prayer to the Emperor before I retire. Call me if you need anything,’ she told Ardelia, before bowing and making her way through the thick wooden doors that led from the main ward into the stone flagged vestibule.

  She walked stiffly towards a low arch, stepping down into a short, candlelit passageway with a black door at its end. A carving of a hooded figure with golden wings filled the door and Joaniel pushed it open and entered the medicae’s chapel.

  The chapel was a simple affair, barely large enough to hold two-dozen worshippers. Three lines of hard, wooden pews ran in orderly lines from the alabaster statue at the end of the nave and scores of candles filled the air with a warm, smoky glow. Above the statue, a semi-circular window of stained glass threw a pool of coloured light across the polished wooden floor.

  Joaniel bowed and made her way towards the two stone benches flanking the statue and knelt before it, bowing her head and clasping her hands together in prayer. Silently she whispered words of devotion and obedience, ignoring the dull ache that grew in her knees as the cold seeped into her bones from the bare floor. Tears filled her eyes as she prayed, the sights and sounds of Remian coming back so vividly that she could taste the smoke and smell the blood.

  She finished her prayers and painfully pushed herself to her feet, the metal pins in her right thigh aching in the cold. The field hospital on Remian had taken a direct hit from an enemy artillery shell and she alone had been pulled from the wreckage, the bones of her leg shattered into fragments. The soldiers whose lives she had saved had rounded up the finest surgeons and her surgery had been performed beneath the flickering light of an artillery barrage. She had lived, but the thousands of her patients in the building had not, and the guilt of her survival gnawed at her soul like a cancer.

  She rubbed the feeling back into her legs and bowed again to the Emperor’s statue before turning to make her way back to her cold cell above.

  ‘As the Emperor wills,’ she said.

  THE VOLCANIC WORLD of Yulan was beautiful from space, its flickering atmosphere riven with streaks of scarlet lightning and the swirls of ruby clouds painting streamers of bright colours across its northern hemisphere. A cluster of ships hung in orbit, buffeted by the planet’s seismic discharges and flares of ignited gasses from the cracked surface.

  Their captains fought to hold their vessels steady, their shields at full amplitude to protect them from a host of hazardous materials being ejected from the world below. Though even the smallest vessel was almost a kilometre long, they were all dwarfed by the three behemoths that hung in geostationary orbit above Yulan. Hundreds of pilot ships and powerful tugs from the docks above the nearby planet of Chordelis fought the miasma of turbulence in the planet’s lower atmosphere to manoeuvre themselves into position at the vast docking lugs at the front of the enormous creations.

  Each behemoth was a hydrogen-plasma mining station that drank deeply of the planet’s violent atmosphere and refined it into valuable fuels used by the tanks of the Imperial Guard, the ships of the Navy and virtually every machine tended by the Adeptus Mechanicus. They were largely automated, as the handling of such volatile fuels was, to say the least, highly dangerous.

  For several hours, and at the cost of scores of servitor drones, the first of the huge refinery ships was slowly dragged from orbit, its vast bulk moving at a crawl into the darkness of space.

  Despite the danger of working in such a hostile environment, the work to moor the tug ships to the second refinery was achieved in little under three hours and it moved to join the first on the journey to Chordelis. The Adeptus Mechanicus magos overseeing the mission to Yulan was pleased with the speed with which the operation was proceeding, but knew that time was running out to recover the third refinery.

  Already the tyranid fleet had reached Parosa and was heading this way.

  Time was of the essence and a further six, frustrating hours passed as the tug crews tried again and again to attach themselves to the last refinery in the turbulent lower atmosphere. The tug captains moved in again, their frustration and orders for haste perhaps making them more reckless than was healthy.

  But haste and a billion-tonne refinery packed with lethally combustible fuels are two things that do not sit well together.

  The captain of the tug vessel Truda moved his vessel gingerly into position on the forward docking spar of the last refinery, eschewing the normal safety procedures regarding proximity protocols. As the Truda moved into final position, her captain was so intent on the docking lugs ahead that he failed to notice the Cylla coming around a sucking, gas intake tower.

  At the last second, both captains realised their danger and attempted to avoid the inevitable collision, the Truda veering right and barrelling into the intake tower. She smashed herself to destruction against its structure, buckling the hot metal of the tower and crashing through the thin plates before exploding as her fuel cells ruptured.

  The Truda could not have struck the refinery in a worse place: designed to capture the hot gasses from the planet below, the intake tower sucked a huge breath of the tug’s explosion, carrying the burning plasma of its engines to the very heart of the refinery’s combustion chambers, where it ignited an uncontrolled chain reaction.

  Emergency procedures initiated, but blast doors not shut since the refinery’s construction thousands of years ago jammed and shutdown measures failed as ancient circuits failed to close, their wiring long having since degraded to the point of uselessness.

  Within minutes of the crash, the internal chambers of the refinery began exploding sequentially, with each blast blowing apart more storage chambers and multiplying the force of the blast exponentially.

  From high orbit, it appeared as though the giant refinery was convulsing and before any warning could be given to the ships still clustered nearby, it exploded in a flaring corona that eclipsed the brightness of the system’s star.

  Everything within a thousand kilometres of the blast was instantly vaporised and the shockwave ruptured the surface of the planet below, sending plumes of fiery gasses into space.

  The blast wave faded, leaving nothing of the refinery or the hundreds of men that made up the Adeptus Mechanicus detachment tasked with its retrieval, save an expanding cloud of burning plasma gas.

  Oblivious to the disaster in their wake, the flotilla of tugs continued onwards to Chordelis with the two surviving refineries lifted from geo-stationary orbit around Yulan in tow.

  Why the Ultramarines’ admiral ha
d tasked them with this dangerous duty, they did not know, but theirs was not to question, simply to obey.

  THE SIX TRUCKS sat silently in the dimly lit vehicle hangar, moonlight streaming in through the high windows providing the only illumination. A dozen soldiers granted as they loaded crates onto the back of the trucks, overseen by a supply sergeant of the Erebus Commissariat, who, despite the fact that the temperature was below zero, sweated beneath the fur-lined hood of his winter coat.

  He smoked a limp bac-stick and stamped his feet to ward off the cold as the last crate was loaded onto the truck, each one marked with a scorched burn where a Departmento Munitorum shipping number and regimental crest had been stamped. The tailgates of each track were slammed shut and secured with chained locking-pins and as his soldiers filed passed him, he pressed a wad of promissory notes into each one’s hand.

  ‘Don’t do anything dumb with this,’ he warned.

  As the last of the soldiers left the garage, he stubbed out his bac-stick and circled the tracks, checking that all the tailgates were secured. As he rattled the last one, a group of figures emerged from the shadows at the far end of the garage.

  ‘You all done?’ asked the figure at the front.

  The supply sergeant jumped, his hand reaching for the pistol below his coat.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that if I was you,’ growled a hulking figure behind the first and the sergeant raised his hands.

  ‘Snowdog,’ he breathed in relief, lowering his hands as the group came into the light. He flipped another bac-stick into his mouth.

  ‘You expecting someone else, Tudeca?’ asked Snowdog, his shotgun resting on his shoulder. The leader of the Night-crawlers wore a thick woollen coat to ward off the winter’s chill and his bleached hair shone as silver as that of the girl beside him. Behind Snowdog stood the psychotic thug he called Jonny Stomp and a trio of painfully thin youths decorated with colourful, if badly drawn, tattoos across their faces. At a gesture from Snowdog, they jogged towards the cabs of three of the tracks, a redheaded girl in a tight catsuit climbing into the nearest one.

  ‘No,’ said Sergeant Tudeca. ‘It’s just you startled me. I wasn’t expecting you so soon.’

  ‘What can I say: I like to surprise people,’ said Snowdog, nodding to Jonny Stomp. The brutish giant climbed onto the

  back of each of the trucks in turn, counting the number of crates in the back of each one. Sergeant Tudeca stepped nervously from foot to foot, surprised Jonny Stomp could count past his fingers, as Snowdog and Silver watched him carefully.

  ‘It’s all there?’ asked Snowdog.

  ‘Yeah, it’s all there. Medical supplies and ration packs, just like you wanted. Didn’t I tell you I could get them for you?’

  ‘Yeah, you really came through for us,’ agreed Snowdog, putting an arm around Tudeca’s shoulders and lifting the pack of bac-sticks from his breast pocket.

  Snowdog waited for a second, raising an eyebrow until Tudeca took the hint and lit the bac-stick for him, the flame wavering in his shaking hands. Snowdog reached up to steady the sergeant’s hand.

  ‘You okay, Tudeca?’ said Snowdog with false concern. ‘You look all jittery, man. Something on your mind?’

  ‘It’s going to cost more,’ blurted Tudeca. ‘I had to give my lads twice what they normally get for this. The commissariat provosts are coming down hard on anyone they catch stealing, and if they arrest me, it’s a bullet in the head for sure.’

  ‘Tudeca, Tudeca,’ soothed Snowdog. ‘Don’t look at this as stealing: look at it as redistributing it to the people who really need it. Look, all this stuff was going to the medicae buildings for the regiments from off world. I’ll make sure it gets to the people of Erebus… at a nominal charge.’

  Tudeca laughed, a hoarse bray, and said, ‘Nominal charge! You’ll be selling this for four times its worth.’

  ‘Hey man, it’s a seller’s market out there. If I can make a little money out of this war, then who’s to say that’s a bad thing?’

  ‘Don’t forget, you’re hip-deep in this too,’ pointed out Silver, her long hair glittering in the moonlight.

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ said Tudeca sourly, as Jonny Stomp dropped from the back of the last track.

  ‘It’s all there, near as I can tell,’ he said.

  ‘Well, what the hell does that mean?’ said Snowdog. ‘It either is or it isn’t.’

  ‘I mean it looks right to me,’ growled Jonny.

  ‘Good enough, I guess,’ said Snowdog with a shrug as Silver and Jonny Stomp each got behind the wheel of a track. He vaulted into the cab of the truck next to him and slammed the door behind him. He rolled down the side window and leaned out, looking over his shoulder at Sergeant Tudeca as the engines of tracks roared into life. He pulled out a wad of bills, a chunk of the score from the Flesh Bar – minus what he’d paid for a stolen shipment of guns from another crooked supply sergeant the night before – and flicked it through the air towards Tudeca.

  The sergeant caught the money with a lopsided grin of avarice.

  ‘I can get more of this stuff in a little while,’ he shouted, his greed overcoming his natural cowardice. ‘I just got to wait until the heat dies down a little.’

  Headlights speared from their mountings and the first truck moved off into the night.

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ said Snowdog as he gunned the engine of his track.

  ‘After all,’ said Tudeca. ‘Business is business.’

  ‘Yeah,’ agreed Snowdog. ‘Business as usual.’

  SEVEN

  THE ORBITAL DOCKS of Chordelis were a scene of controlled anarchy, as every technician, shipwright and able-bodied man available was pressed into service repairing the terrible damage done by the tyranids to the vessels of the Imperial Navy following the Battle of Barbarus. A perimeter of local gunboats formed a picket line around the naval vessels, isolating them from the swarm of ships that rose from the surface of Chordelis in an uncontrolled tide.

  Under the supervision of the Mortifactors’ Techmarines, thick sheets of steel were welded onto the damaged sections of the Mortis Probati and fresh shells loaded into her magazines. The crews of the Heroic Endeavour and the sole surviving vessel of Hydra squadron swarmed around their hulls, jury-rigging repairs that would allow them to go into battle once more. No one was under any illusions that these repairs were anything more than temporary – each ship would need many months in dock to return to full service.

  The Vae Victus had escaped comparatively unscathed. Her hull had been breached in four places, but none of the tyranid boarding organisms had penetrated further than the outer decks and repairs would be a relatively simple matter. Not that this was any consolation to Admiral Tiberius, who had vowed that he would not forget the insult done to his ship by the Mortifactors’ impetuosity. The bulk of the work on her hull had already been completed and beyond the picket line of gunboats, Arx Praetora squadron and the Dauntless cruisers Yermetov and Luxor awaited to escort her on another mission.

  Since the warning of the tyranids’ impending arrival had reached Chordelis, the planet had been steadily emptying and hundreds of vessels clogged the shipping lanes around the world. Wealthy citizens with their own vessels were the first to depart, closely followed by those able to book passage off-world. Those with enough money fled deeper into the galactic core while those unable to finance such a journey travelled on commercial ships crammed with refugees that shuttled back and forth between Chordelis and Tarsis Ultra. Greedy captains, scenting opportunity for profit, raised their prices accordingly until even the wealthy fled as paupers.

  But though millions escaped, millions more remained. Panicked crowds flocked to every major spaceport, trying to get to safety. Desperate to escape, men offered eternal service and women offered themselves. Some were successful, more were not, and fear spread like an epidemic through the people of Chordelis.

  At Berliaas, desperate crowds demonstrated outside the governor’s palace, demanding action be taken to evacuate the po
pulace. Tempers flared and thousands of angry citizens stormed the palace only to find the planetary governor had already fled Chordelis and that his missives for calm had been broadcast from off-world.

  In Dremander, the crew of a rogue trader’s vessel opened fire on people trying to commandeer their vessel, killing more than seventy before being overrun and torn to pieces by the angry mob.

  Two days after this incident, more than eleven thousand people died at Jaretaq, the planet’s largest port, as terrified crowds broke through the lines of Arbites guarding the entrance and demanded passage on the fleet of departing vessels thronging her landing platforms. As the luxury vessel Cherrona lifted from the planet’s surface, angry crowds prevented the ground crews from releasing her mooring cables. Her starboard engine was torn free of its mountings as her captain brought her about for departure. The engine dropped and blew apart like a bomb among the milling crowds and the ponderous vessel began sliding back towards the ground, the attraction of gravity too much for its remaining engine to fight. Fully laden with refugees and thousands of tonnes of fuel, the Cherrona swayed drunkenly in the air, striking the nearby control tower before slamming into the landing platforms of the spaceport.

  The Cherrona exploded with the power of an orbital bombardment, hurling blazing sheets of fire and lethal fragments in all directions, scything through thousands of people and touching off scores of secondary explosions. The devastation ripped through the spaceport until almost nothing was left standing. The blazing pyres of this terrible disaster could be seen as far away as the planetary capital of Kaimes.

  All across Chordelis, the same scenes played out as its terrified population fought to escape their doomed world.

  THE COMMAND BRIDGE of the Vae Victus was tense and subdued as Admiral Tiberius kept his ship a respectable distance from the mighty structure that slid through space before them and filled the viewing bay. They had all heard of the disaster at Yulan and the loss of the third refinery, and Tiberius was determined that nothing similar would happen to this one.