Helsreach (warhammer 40000)

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  The first was a servitor who had been a gardener in life, and had devoted several of his living years, before the augmetics had stolen his reason and independence, to counting the graves as he tended the gardens around them. He'd been curious, and it had satisfied him to learn the truth. He kept it to himself, knowing to report it to his superiors might bring down accusations of laxity in his primary duties. He was, after all, a garden-tender and not a stock-counter or cogitator. Three months after he had satisfied himself with the truth, he was found stealing from the Temple's tithe boxes, and sentenced to augmetic reconfiguration.

  The second person who knew the truth was Prioress Sindal. She had also counted them herself, over the course of three years. To her, it was a form of meditation; of bringing herself to a state of oneness with the people of Armageddon. She had not been born here, and in her devoted service to the people of this world, she felt her meditative technique was apt enough.

  She had, of course, filed amendments to the records, but they were still locked in the bureaucratic cycle. The Temple's cardinal council were notoriously foul at having their staff deal with paperwork.

  Most gravestones were stacked close together in clusters of bloodline or fealty, and there was no conformity in the markers - each was a slightly different size, shape, material or angle to those nearby, even in sections where the rows were ordered in neat lines. In other parts of the graveyard district, finding one's way along a pathway was akin to navigating a labyrinth, with weaving a way between the graves taking a great deal of time.

  The Temple of the Emperor Ascendant itself was, by Imperial standards, a thing of haunting and gothic beauty. The spires were ringed by stone angels and depictions of the Emperor's primarchs as saints. Stained glass windows displayed a riot of colours, showing scenes of the God-Emperor's Great Crusade to bring the stars into union beneath humanity's vigilant guidance. Lesser depictions were of the first settlers themselves, their deeds of survival and construction exaggerated to deific proportion, showing them as the builders of a glorious, perfect world of golden light and marble cathedrals, rather than the industrial planet they had founded in truth.

  The Sisters of the Order of the Argent Shroud had not been idle during the months of warfare that ravaged the rest of the city. Lesser shrines in the graveyard were both heavy weapon outposts and chapels to their founder, Saint Silvana. Angular statues of solid silver - each one of the weeping saint in various poses of grief, triumph and contemplation - stood silent watch over turret pods and barricaded gun-nests.

  The walls themselves were reinforced in the same way as the city walls, and bore the same ratio of defence turrets per metre. These remained manned by Helsreach militia.

  The Temple courtyard's great gates were not closed. Despite the protestations of the cardinal council, Prioress Sindal had demanded the doors be kept open until the last possible moment, allowing more and more refugees to enter over the weeks of siege. The basilica's undercroft housed hundreds of families who hadn't been able to enter the subterranean shelters, for reasons of criminal activity, administrative error, or outright bad luck. Bunched together in the gloom, they came up for morning and evening prayer, adding their voices to the singing pleas that reached up the immaculately-painted ceiling, where the God-Emperor was depicted staring off into the heavens.

  The Temple of the Emperor Ascendant was, in short, a fortress.

  A fortress filled with refugees, and surrounded by the largest graveyard in the world.

  We are the last to arrive.

  Twenty-nine of my brothers already await my arrival, with our cargo gunship grounded nearby. It brings our total force to thirty-five, if one was to count Jurisian labouring on the forlorn hope, bring the weapon across the Ash Wastes.

  Thirty-five of the hundred that landed in Helsreach five weeks before.

  One of those awaiting our arrival is the one warrior I have done all I can to avoid for the last five weeks.

  He kneels before the open gates of the Temple's compound, his black sword plunged into the marble before him, helmed head lowered in reverence. As with the Templars around him, almost all evidence of scripture parchment, wax crusader seals and cloth tabard is gone from his armour. I recognise him because of his ancient armour and the dark blade he prays to.

  Jurisian himself has worked on that armour, repairing it with reverence each time he has been honoured with the chance to touch it. Before Jurisian, a host of other Masters of the Forge maintained the relic war plate through the centuries, back to its original forging as a suit of armour for the Imperial Fists Legion.

  While our armour shows dull grey wounds under the stripped paint, this knight's war plate, forged in a time when primarchs walked the galaxy, shows gold beneath the battle damage. The legacy of Dorn's Legion is still there if one knows where to look; between the cracks, revealed by war.

  The knight rises, pulling the sword from the marble with no effort at all. His helm turns to face me, and a faceplate that once stared out onto the battlefields of the Horus Heresy regards me with eye lenses the colour of human blood.

  He salutes me, sword sheathed on his back and his gauntlets making the sign of the aquila over his battered breastplate. I return the salute, and rarely in my life has the gesture been so heartfelt. I am finally ready to stand before him, and endure the judging stare of those crimson eyes.

  'Hail, Reclusiarch,' he says to me.

  'Hail, Bayard,' I say to the Emperor's Champion of the Helsreach Crusade.

  He watches me, but I know he is not seeing me. He sees Mordred, the knight whose weapon I bear, and whose face I wear.

  'My liege.' Priamus comes forward, kneeling before Bayard.

  'Priamus,' Bayard vox-laughs. 'Still breathing, I see.'

  'Nothing on this world will change that, my liege.'

  'Rise, brother. The day will never come that you must kneel before me.' Priamus rises, inclining his head in respect once more before returning to my side. 'Artarion, Bastilan, it is good to see you both. And you, Nero.'

  Nerovar makes the sign of the aquila, but says nothing.

  'Cador's fall tore at my heart, brother. He and I served in the Sword Brethren together, did you know that?'

  'I knew it, my liege. Cador spoke of it often. He was honoured to serve at your side.'

  'The honour was mine. Know that fifty of the enemy died by my blade the day I heard of his passing. Throne, but he was a warrior to quench the fires of the stars themselves. I miss him fiercely, and the Eternal Crusade is poorer without his sword.'

  'You… do great honour to his memory.' Nero's voice is choked with emotion.

  'Tell me, brother,' Bayard's tone lowers, as if the refugees standing and staring at us outside the great gates have no right to hear of what we speak. 'I heard his death-wound was in the back. Is this so?'

  Nero's nod comes with reluctance. 'It is.'

  'I also heard he killed nine of the beasts alone, before succumbing to his wounds.'

  'He did.'

  'Nine. Nine. Then he died facing his enemy, as a knight must. Thank you, Nero. You have brought me comfort this day.'

  'I… I…'

  'Welcome, brothers. It has been too long since we stood united.' There are general murmurs of assent, and Bayard looks to me.

  I smile behind my mask.

  They rode in the back compartment of a trundling Chimera armoured personnel transport, their backs thumping against the metal walls with each sharp turn. It had been parked on the highway itself, riddled with bullet holes and las-burns, but still very much fuelled and ready to roll. Andrej and the others had dragged the bodies of dead Legionnaires out onto the road, and the storm-trooper had forced the dockers to say a short prayer over the corpses before he would, as he put it, ''steal their ride''.

  'Manners cost nothing,' he told them. 'And these men died for your city.'

  The troop section in the back of the Chimera was a typical slice of Guard life, smelling of blood, oil and rancid sweat. On creaking bench
es, Maghernus and his dockers, along with Asavan Tortellius recruited to their cause, sat and waited for Andrej to get them all the way down the Hel's Highway.

  He was not a good driver. They had mentioned this to him, and he professed not to know what they were talking about. Besides, he'd added, the left tank tread was damaged. That was why he kept skidding.

  Also, he'd amended last of all, they should shut up. So there.

  Andrej cycled through vox-channels, still getting no luck on any frequency. Whether every vox-tower in the city was gone or the orks had some intense jamming campaign going on was beside the point at this stage. He couldn't get in touch with his commanders, and that left him to his own devices. As always, he would go forward. It was the way of the Legion, and the creed of the Guard.

  The way he saw it, the Reclusiarch owed him a favour. In this case, going forward meant making a stand with the black knights until he could find someone, anyone, from his command structure.

  There'd been a particularly galling moment when he'd managed to contact elements of the 233rd Steel Legion Armoured Division, but they were in the middle of being annihilated by an enemy scrap-Titan formation and had no time for pleasantries. Fate was laughing at him, Andrej was sure of it - the one Imperial force he'd been able to reach were minutes from being wiped out anyway.

  This was no way to fight a war. No communication between any forces? Madness!

  Smoke and flames were on the horizon ahead, but that indicated next to nothing of any use in determining direction or destination. Smoke and flames were on every horizon. Smoke and flame was all each of the horizons had become.

  Andrej was not laughing. This did not amuse him, no sir.

  He changed gear with a nauseating grind of metal hating metal. A chorus of complaints jeered from the back as the Chimera juddered in protest and shook his passengers around some more. He heard someone's head clang off the interior wall. He hoped it was the fat priest's.

  Andrej sniggered. At least that was funny.

  '…ckr… sn… tl…' declared the vox.

  Aha! Now this was progress.

  'This is Trooper Andrej, of the—'

  He closed his mouth as the transmission crackled into a semblance of clarity. The burning district ahead, through which he'd need to pass to reach the distant Temple… it was the Rostorik Ironworks. The vox told of a Titan's death-wails.

  'Hold on,' he called back, and accelerated the battered transport along the Hel's Highway, towards the emerging shape of Stormherald above the surrounding industrial towers.

  The link was savaged by Bound in Blood's mortis-cry. Zarha twisted in her coffin, trying to filter the empathic pain from the influx of sensory information she needed to focus on.

  Her fistless arm pushed forward in the milky fluid, and the Titan obeyed her furious need.

  'Firing,' Valian Carsomir confirmed.

  In the centre of the industrial sector, ringed by burning towers and crushed manufactories, the Imperator Titan weathered a hail of enemy fire from scrap-walkers that barely reached its waist. Its shields rippled with searing intensity, corona-bright and almost blinding.

  The plasma annihilator amassed power, sucking in a storm of air through its coolant vanes and juddering as it made ready to release. Around the god-machine's legs, the waddling ork walkers blared sirens and howling warnings to one another. Burning vapour clouded around the shaking plasma weapon as it vented pressure, and with a roar that shattered every remaining window in a kilometre-wide radius, Stormherald fired.

  Three of the lesser scrap-Titans were engulfed in the flood of boiling plasma that surged from the weapon, melting to sludge in the white-hot sunfire.

  Zarha's arm was aflame with sympathetic agony. She did her best to blank it from her mind, focusing instead on the rattling crawl of insects over her body. Her shields were taking grave damage now. Stormherald could not linger here for much longer.

  'Bound in Blood isn't rising, my princeps.'

  Zarha knew this. She'd heard its soul scream across the Legio's princeps-level link.

  He is dying.

  'He is dying.'

  'Orders, my princeps?'

  Stand. Fight.

  'Stand. Fight.'

  The Titan shuddered as another wreck-walker staggered closer, its shoulder cannons booming. Standing above the downed Reaver-class Titan Bound in Blood, Stormherald returned, fire with its incidental weapon batteries, flash-frying the lesser machine's void shields in a hail of incendiary fire.

  Zarha pushed her other arm forward through the ooze, laughing as she moved. Stormherald's other arm, the colossal hellstorm cannon, thrummed as its internal mechanics chambers and drive engines cycled up to firing speed.

  'My princeps…' Lonn and Carsomir warned in the same breath. Zarha cackled in her tomb of fluid. 'Die!'

  'Die!'

  The enemy scrap-Titan was shredded by five energy lances blasting from Stormherald's hellstorm cannon. In less than three seconds, its plasma core was breached and critically venting, and in less than five it had exploded, taking the bulk of the fat-bodied gargant with it. Shrapnel shards the size of tanks hammered off the Imperator's void shields, leaving distortions of bruising while the generators struggled to compensate.

  'Secondary impact from the turbolaser batteries… Cog's teeth, we struck the G-71 orbital landing platform. My princeps, I implore you to use caution…'

  Engine kill. She licked her cold, wrinkled lips. Engine kill.

  'Engine kill.'

  Half a kilometre behind the dead enemy walker - its foundation struts destroyed by the laser salvo from Stormherald's hellstorm cannon - a sizeable landing platform crashed down to the ground, sliding on fouled gantries to smash through the roof of a burning tank manufactorum. An avalanche of rockcrete, broken iron and steel was all that remained of both installations, at the heart of a cloud of grey-black smoke and rock dust.

  The ironyard had played host to the pitched battle between Titans and infantry for several days. Little was left, yet neither side was giving ground.

  'My princeps…'

  No more lectures. I do not care.

  'No more lectures. I do not care.'

  'My princeps,' Valian repeated, 'new contact. Behind us.'

  She spun in the fluid, fish-like and alert. Stormherald followed with ponderous slowness, its fortress-legs thudding down onto the ground. The cityscape view through the Titan's eyes panned, showing nothing but devastation.

  'The scanner blur is either several walkers together, or a single engine of our size.'

  The adept hunched by the auspex console turned to regard the pilot crew with three bionic eyes, each with a lens of dark green glass. A blurt of machine-code disagreed with Lonn's appraisal.

  []Negative. Thermal signature registers distinct single pulse. [ ]

  One enemy engine.

  That isn't possible, she thought, but never let it reach her vocalisers. An uneasy tremor was running through the Titan's bones, and she felt it as keenly as she'd once felt the wind on her skin in another lifetime.

  'My princeps, we must disengage,' Lonn said, staring out into the burning ironyard. 'We need to rearm and cool the plasma core in standard sustained venting procedure.'

  I know that better than you, Lonn.

  'I know that better than you, Lonn.'

  But I am not abandoning a district I have spent four nights fighting to hold.

  'But I am not abandoning a district I have spent four nights fighting to hold.'

  'My princeps, there's precious little left standing to defend,' Lonn pressed. 'I repeat my recommendation to withdraw and rearm.'

  No. I am sending Regal and Ivory Fang north to hunt the inbound enemy engine and confirm with visual scanning.

  'No. I am sending Regal and Ivory Fang north to hunt the inbound enemy engine and confirm with visual scanning.'

  Lonn and Carsomir shared a glance from across the command deck. Both men were restrained in their control thrones, and both men wore the s
ame expression of frustrated doubt.

  'My princeps,' Carsomir tried, but he was cut off.

  'See? They move.' On the hololithic display screen, the runes denoting the scout Titans Regal and Ivory Fang broke away from their perimeter-stalking patrol to the west, and strode northward in search of the incoming thermal pulse.

  'My princeps, we do not have the ammunition reserves required to inflict destruction-level damage on an enemy engine of comparable size to us.'

  'I am venting the heart-core's excess fusion matter and flushing the heat exchangers.' Even as she vocalised the orders, she was sending empathic pulses through her links to make it so.

  'My princeps, that is not enough.'

  'He is right, my princeps,' Carsomir had turned in his throne, and was looking back at her fluid tank now. 'You are too close to Stormherald's wrath. Return to us and focus.'

  'We are defended by three Reavers and our own scout screen. Be silent.'

  'Two Reavers, my princeps.'

  Yes. Two. She pulled back from the immersion of rage. Yes… two. Bound in Blood was silent and dead, its power core cooling and its princeps voiceless. In her confused thinking, she did not mean to vocalise her next words.

  'We have lost seven engines in one week of battle.'

  'Yes, my princeps. Prudence would serve us best now. If the auspex is true, we must withdraw.'

  She floated in her coffin, hearing the curious humanity in their voices. Such emotion. Such curious intensity, affecting their speech tones. She recognised it as fear, without truly recalling what the sensation felt like.

  'We have killed almost twenty of the foe's engines… but I concede. Sound the withdrawal as soon as the Warhounds have confirmation.'

  * * *

  The first Imperial engine to bear witness to the Godbreaker was Ivory Fang. It stalked fast and low on its backwards-jointed legs, the side-to-side pitch of its stomping gait adding a feral, if mechanical, grace to its dawn hunt.