by Gav Thorpe
There was no word raised from the captains against the powerful argument spoken by the Master of Sanctity. Ixion shook his head slightly as Cassius looked directly at him, while Agemman lowered his eyes, unable to meet the Chaplain's gaze. The council turned to Marneus Calgar, who had remained attentive but dispassionate throughout the exchange.
'We cannot abandon our war against the orks,' he said, raising a hand as Cassius opened his mouth to offer argument, silencing the Chaplain. The Chapter Master looked at Cassius. 'Oaths have been sworn to defend the people of the Vortengard Spiral. However, it is not right that we abandon Styxia to the uncertain care of the Imperial Guard. Our expertise could prove vital in such a campaign.'
Calgar stood up and walked around the table to lay a hand on the shoulder plate of the Chaplain.
'Cassius will lead a task force to Styxia. Company-strength, drawn from across the Chapter,' Calgar continued. 'One hundred Space Marines should be enough of a command to make the presence of the Ultramarines felt. Does that suit you?'
'It does,' said Cassius with a nod. 'I shall ask for volunteers.'
'No,' said Agemman. 'That would be unfair. There is not a battle-brother in the Chapter who would not follow you to war, and I would not have those who are not chosen feel that they have been judged against. We shall draw a force from amongst our companies sufficient for the task.'
'As I warned, materiel is scarce,' said Astersis. The Techmarine stroked his chin in thought. 'Some Rhinos and Razorbacks could be spared.'
'Take the strike cruiser Fidelis as transport,' said Calgar. 'It has sufficient berths and craft to effect a landing for one hundred warriors.'
'Your faith will be rewarded,' said Cassius. 'A hundred Space Marines is a force that will baulk any foe. The glory of the Ultramarines will be maintained, our honour upheld.'
'I will look unkindly upon unnecessary heroics,' said Calgar, his expression grim. 'We cannot afford heavy casualties at this time. I trust you not to spend the lives of the Chapter's warriors without good cause. Do not disappoint me.'
Feeling chastised, Cassius dropped to one knee and bowed his head to his Chapter Master.
'Your disappointment would be the most severe castigation I could suffer,' said the Chaplain. 'We will not fail.'
CHAPTER II
AT FIRST ENCOUNTER, Cassius thought the defence of Styxia appeared shambolic. Once the Fidelis had transitioned back into realspace and gained full sensor reports, a more coherent pattern emerged and the Chaplain evaluated his assessment of his new allies.
Four hive ships had entered Styxia several weeks earlier. One had been destroyed by the great effort and sacrifice of the system defence ships and the first elements of the Imperial Navy flotilla that had been despatched. Two others had been intercepted and turned away from the most heavily populated world, Styxia Prime, though they remained dangerously close to gaining orbit over the world.
The fourth had not been stopped. It was dead now, a gigantic carcass with a slowly depleting orbit that looked like a small, shrivelled moon circling Styxia Prime. Its destruction had been too late, however, and a huge mass of tyranids had made planetfall.
Still ten days from Styxia, Cassius ordered the Fidelis to approach at full speed, ignoring the ongoing cat-and-mouse encounter between the Imperial vessels and the two functioning hive ships. All attempts to separate the tyranid vessels from one another had failed, and the battleship and two light cruisers tasked by the Navy to halt the invasion simply did not have enough firepower to take on both foes at once. Navy reinforcements were supposedly only days away, including two battle cruisers, but there was a fear that Gorgon had not yet revealed its whole strength and other hive ships might appear at any time.
The first priority was to secure the main city of Plains Fall, which formed the hub of the agri-world's exporting capability. A city-sized starport, Plains Fall was the only vaguely defensible position on the entire planet; the rest of the population was spread thinly across the farms that provided cereal and grox meat to hungry hive-worlds light years away.
Although the Imperial Navy had not fared too well in its initial defence of the system, they had safely transported two Imperial Guard regiments to the surface before the tyranid landing: the Astcarian Fourth, a heavy infantry formation which had been bolstered by a company of Imperial storm troopers; and the Cadian 308th who had been despatched from their home world on the other side of the galaxy two years before, in response to the battles against Hive Fleet Kraken in the build-up to the war for Ichar IV.
In overall command of the Imperial defenders was General Arka, who Cassius had met before in the aftermath of Ichar IV. This heartened the Chaplain a little, as Arka was known as a capable commander and Cassius's own experience of the man had been positive. Three days from orbit, the two were able to hold a conference of sorts.
It was during this brief council of war that Cassius received further good news. Several Titans of the Legio Fortitudis had been brought to Styxia, including two massive Warlord-class machines.
The only deficiency that Cassius could see was a lack of airpower and orbital supremacy. With the Imperial Navy unable to destroy the remaining hive ships for the time being, the troops on the ground were wary of further enemy planetfalls. Though the arrival of the Fidelis was a little boon in this regard, the strike cruiser was mainly fitted out for orbital assault rather than engaging other starships. The bulk of her space was taken up with launch bays and drop-pod cascades, her weapons geared towards providing orbital bombardment of a dropsite prior to the Space Marines' assault.
During their short conversation, Arka invited Cassius to join him at Plains Fall to assist in the defence of the city. The decision had been made to pull as many inhabitants as possible back to the city, sacrificing the fields and grox farms to the tyranid swarm. Crops could be re-seeded and herds re-stocked in a short space of time, but the massed orbital elevators and docking facilities at Plains Fall would take decades to rebuild if they were overrun and destroyed.
The city had grown around three gravity lifts that soared up into the clouds. Each metres-thick cable was still working, offloading the last harvests to cargo haulers waiting in orbit, the bulk carriers elevating thousands of tonnes of raw foodstuff every few minutes while empty carriages descended. Scores of warehouses the size of hangars encircled the lifters, supplied by a steady stream of crawlers that entered along the dozen roads radiating from the transit hub like spokes of a wheel. Each highway was lined with teetering tenements housing thousands of stevedores and teamsters, overlooked from an artificial mount by the white-walled palace of the Imperial Commander, Sevastin Goul.
Fourteen landing aprons were arrayed around the central complex, linked by a maze of elevated highways and railroads that teemed with trucks and locomotives. Steam and smoke and exhaust fumes billowed around the city, creating a hazy fog that drifted lazily into the cloudy sky.
As soon as the Fidelis had attained low orbit, Cassius took a Thunderhawk down to the city. As he descended towards the main dock, the forces and preparations of the Imperial Guard were evident all across Plains Fall.
Earthworks tens of metres high were being erected around the whole of Plains Fall. Prefabricated bunkers were shipped into position slung beneath enormous tetracopters. Engineer and pioneer teams hundreds-strong dug kilometres of trenchworks and excavated dozens of revetments for mortars and heavy weapons. At each of the twelve inroads, fortified bastions were growing up from the bare earth, studded with weapons turrets and firing ports, covering the open approaches into the city.
Storage sacks had been filled with dirt and sand to make bagged enclosures on the top of the flat-roofed buildings, manned by the Guardsmen under General Arka's command. Columns of Leman Russ tanks prowled further out along the highway, while at the limit of vision, squadrons of Sentinel walkers patrolled back and forth, waiting for the first approach of the tyranids.
The Titans of the Legio Fortitudis stood guard to the north and west: a Wa
rlord Titan at each highway supported by smaller Warhound Titans and hundreds of Adeptus Mechanicus skitarii in Chimera transports and eight-wheeled armoured cars. The adepts of the Machine-God had brought with them batteries of strange-looking weapons mounted on four-legged walking machines. Cassius recognised some of the artillery - sonic cannons, plasma launchers, lightning generators and more mundane shell-firers - while others were a bewildering array of tubes, cables and dishes whose purpose was unknown to the Chaplain.
Imperial Navy forward ground officers and Departmento Munitorum quartermasters marshalled the effort, and it was from one of these that Cassius's pilot received confirmation that General Arka had made his headquarters in the Teamster Guildhouse near to landing pad quatros. Directions were given and the Thunderhawk touched down in a spume of plasma and smoke in the north-west of Plains Fall.
Striding down the Thunderhawk's ramp, Cassius found himself greeted by a contingent of Cadian officers in long coats and peaked caps. Their uniforms were dark grey mottled with ochre, and every one of the five men had at least a half-dozen honour badges pinned to their breasts or stitched on the sides of their caps. No aristocratic officer class here, as was found in many Imperial regiments. These were Cadian commanders, raised on the most embattled world in the Imperium and promoted purely on merit and ability.
'I am Colonel Taulin,' one introduced himself: a short, wiry man with a thin, grey moustache and bright blue eyes. 'General Arka's aide-in-chief.'
Cassius nodded in greeting as the others stepped forwards and gave their names. Taulin waved to a half-track staff car parked at the side of the apron. Two gunners manned heavy stubbers in a compartment at the back, their weapons trained towards the sky.
'We have had sporadic gargoyle attacks for the last two days,' explained Taulin, noticing the object of Cassius's interest. 'No great numbers, just scouting forces we think.'
Without comment, Cassius followed the man to the vehicle and vaulted over the side into the space between the gunners, the half-track rocking on its axles from his weight. The officers sat down on the padded benches in front as the driver gunned the engine. Taulin twisted in his seat to continue the conversation.
'Sorry we couldn't find something a bit more dignified to convey you to the general, but all of the Chimeras are being used to ferry as many refugees as we can find into the city.'
Cassius tested a thick-sided ammo crate and found it sturdy enough to use as a seat. Still he towered over the other men as he looked down into the wood-panelled seating compartment.
'Do not bother yourself in that regard,' said the Chaplain. 'I expect to be treated with the minimum of ceremony and pomp. We are all soldiers of the Emperor here.'
'Of course,' said Taulin, stretching an arm along the back of the bench. 'General Arka would have met you himself, but we have just received word that contact was lost with a storm trooper patrol about eighty kilometres to the west. The general is coordinating our response.'
The staff car bumped off the apron access ramp onto a pot-holed roadway that headed west towards the edge of the city. To either side, doors and windows on the column-fronted grain stores were being barricaded, while more Guardsmen set up anti-air weapons atop silos and vast storage tanks.
'Arka is a man attentive to detail, if I remember him correctly,' said Cassius.
This raised an unexpected laugh from the cadre of officers.
'Yes, he is very keen on detail,' said one of the lieutenants. 'Arka would pick the target of every man and woman under his command if he were able!'
'I hope he realises that my force will operate with autonomy from the general command structure,' said Cassius. 'I will discuss strategy with him, but the operational implementation of our agreed plan will be my decision alone.'
'The general expected as much,' said Taulin. He pointed at a building a little way ahead with a wide portico at the front reached by a flight of shallow stone steps. Numerous communications masts and dishes had been set up on the roof. 'Our headquarters, Chaplain.'
A Leman Russ Demolisher was parked up by the entrance, the short but wide barrel of its howitzer directed up the street. A platoon of storm troopers in heavy carapace armour coloured a deep red, hellguns held across their chests, stood guard at the top of the steps. Their faces were hidden behind the black visors of their helms, reflecting the front of the building opposite as they watched the new arrivals disembarking from their vehicles. Their lieutenant gave a shout and they came to attention, presenting their weapons amid the clash of booted feet.
Taulin gave a fly-swat of a salute in return as he took the steps two at a time, trying to keep up with the long stride of Cassius, the other command orderlies trailing behind the pair. The Chaplain stopped and placed his fist against the Imperial aquila emblazoned across the gorget of his armour in a return gesture.
The interior was the same as Cassius had experienced countless times before; a mess of people and equipment that seemed to be teetering on the line between calm and anarchy. The doors to the guildhouse opened on to a tiled lobby, and through open archways to each side could be seen groups of Guardsmen clustered around vox sets, analytical cogitators, map tables and hololithic displays.
The soldiers of the Emperor were dressed in a variety of uniforms. Amongst the grey-and-tan of the Cadians were bright splashes of deep blue trench coats, which Cassius presumed were the colours of the Astcarians. Here and there, the sombre black of the commissars was present, watching over everything with stern expressions and hawk-like vigilance. Half-machine servitors babbled streams of information from the vox traffic, while young boys in tight overalls ran to and fro carrying messages from one command staff to another. A few tech-priests monitored the metriculators and sensor banks, their red robes standing out amongst the darker fatigues of the Guardsmen.
Taulin paid no attention to the throng, leading Cassius to another flight of steps that swept up from the far end of the lobby to the storey above. At the top, he turned and walked around a mezzanine overlooking the foyer, taking the Chaplain to a broad set of double doors leading to a room above the entrance.
Inside was a stark contrast to the activity below. The chamber was obviously some kind of meeting hall for the guild - their badge of crossed cranes was emblazoned at one end behind a stage of dark wood, with worker team banners and plaques mounted to either side. Chairs, cabinets and other furniture had been carefully stacked in front of the long row of high windows overlooking the street, leaving only the light from a huge chandelier at the centre of the hall.
In the wide space, General Arka had set up two distinct areas. On the stage had been mounted a larger projector mechanism, attended by a pair of servitors and a junior lieutenant. On the sheet-like screen beneath the guild seal was displayed a map of Downland, the continent on which Plains Fall was situated. Under the direction of the lieutenant, the servitors interfaced with their device, overlaying runes and sigils onto the chart to represent Imperial positions and the possible locations of the tyranids.
Cassius had studied the topography of Styxia Prime whilst travelling through the warp on the way to the system. It had three major landmasses, the largest of which was Downland, covering nearly twenty-eight million square kilometres. Many thousands of years ago, sometime during the Dark Age of Technology, the first human settlers had come to this world and re-ordered the planet to their liking. Mountains had been levelled, seas filled in and rivers diverted to create a land of pastures and gentle uplands. At the heart of Downland were four artificial volcanoes, delved into the earth to bring forth nutrient-rich expulsions that were conveyed by land and water to the mega-farms.
The hills around these volcanoes had been seeded with fast-growing trees to provide hard timber, and it was from this dense wood that many of Styxia Prime's buildings were constructed, with only the largest and most important edifices, such as the starport and governor's palace, being supplemented with ferrocrete panels and ornamented with sandstone blocks quarried from the coastal cliffs.
Plains Fall was located to the east of the continent; its name derived from the thousands of square kilometres of flat fields that surrounded the city. The highways that converged on the city traversed the length and breadth of Downland, crossing hundreds of rivers and canals. For much of their length, the carriageways were raised up on enormous piles fifty metres above the ground, enabling crops and livestock to be grown beneath and allowing the highways to traverse irrigation waterways without interruption. The longest of these stretches, the so called Minoran Gradient, lifted one of the east-west roads to the central highlands, not touching the fertile earth for two and a half thousand kilometres.
A cursory glance at the strategic map confirmed to Cassius that General Arka was concentrating his forces to the west of the city. Sensor reports had shown that the majority of the tyranid spores from the dying hive ship had landed in the volcanic uplands. There was nothing to prevent them ravaging the lands further westwards - there being no settlement or natural feature upon which to form a defensive salient - and so Arka had rightly drawn a cordon across the highways leading from the highlands to Plains Fall, to intercept any swarm-broods advancing on the city. The rest of Downland would be sacrificed for the survival of the world's only major conurbation.
A much smaller, more primitive, map was mounted on a wooden easel in front of the stage, depicting Plains Fall itself. It was a mass of colour, showing defensive lines surrounding the city and the labyrinth of communication and supply lines linking the growing fortification complex together. Around this map were about a hundred seats arranged like an amphitheatre, empty at the moment with no briefing in progress.
