It is the first of three such atrocities that murder two million civilians in one night.
X
It still amuses Ventanus that a mark he made in haste upon a wax-paper map has become so synonymous with the defenders of Calth. With Lanshear laid waste by the orbital batteries, the defenders had needed a place to rally. With virtually every data-engine on the planet dead, a pict scan was made of Ventanus’s map with a rally point marked with black ash.
That scan was broadcast through every civilian pict-caster and Legion slate within reach of Lanshear, and thus was named this bastion of resistance.
Arcology X.
Two quick, crosswise slashes on a map and an element of geography became a piece of history.
A symbol of resistance and a talisman to brandish in the face of the enemy.
XI
The caverns are dim. Power consumption is carefully controlled. The few Mechanicum adepts have yet to stabilise a link to the geothermal grid at the heart of Calth. Flickering lumen globes in protective caging are strung from brickwork supports on looping cables like jungle creepers. This close to the surface, the architecture has a martial character, but with every sub-level they traverse, the more civic and functional it becomes.
The walls are etched with metres-high Xs, and hundreds more on every archway and lintel. Among them, Ventanus sees pictures drawn on the walls, serpentine creatures with dark wings and fanged mouths. Draconis. He sees a childishness to the scratched lines and wonders if these nightmares have been drawn on the walls as a means of expelling them. Are they memories of the monsters brought forth by the heinous pacts made by the Word Bearers or visions drawn from the nightmares common in the wake of the attack?
News of Ventanus’s mission has already reached Arcology X, and the return of the Fourth is greeted with cheers and loud huzzahs from the thousands of civilians packed into its sprawling sub-levels. Someone shouts the word saviour, and the cry is taken up by the multitudes packed into the caves. It follows them down the levels as they plunge deeper and deeper into the bedrock of Calth.
Sydance is waiting for them at the gateway to the administration levels.
His cobalt-blue armour is clean and polished. Some of the Legion have made oaths not to remove the dust and blood of war until Calth is reclaimed, but like Ventanus, Lyros Sydance wants the Word Bearers to see the Ultramarines are still the regal Battle Kings of Macragge.
No amount of treachery and no grief will ever change that.
But even Sydance has adopted the black X on his shoulder guard, carefully etched between the curved arms of the marbled Ultima. It looks like a Chapter number or a company designation, but it is something far more important.
‘You’re making a name for yourself down here, Remus,’ says Sydance as the chants continue behind them.
‘Nothing to do with me, Lyros,’ replies Ventanus. ‘This has your fingerprints all over it.’
Sydance shrugs and grips Ventanus’s wrist. ‘A bit of hope and glory never hurt anyone.’
Ventanus does not release Sydance’s arm. ‘I want it to stop.’
‘Why? What you’re doing, it’s giving people hope.’
‘I’m not a saviour,’ says Ventanus. ‘And I don’t like the connotations of the word.’
‘You don’t have to like it, you just have to endure it.’ says Sydance, turning and making his way down the ramp into the cavern. ‘Come on, the Server’s waiting for you at the Ultimus.’
The war for Calth is being co-ordinated from the lowest level of Arcology X, a cavern seared from the lithosphere by melta drills and seismic charges. Beneath the levels of habitation, engineering and hydroponics, it is a rock-clad dome, some three kilometres in diameter, with numerous branching passageways, sub-galleries, and twisting dead ends radiating from its central void. At its heart stands a structure of polished marble and glass, utilitarian in elevation, but designed in the shape of the XIII Legion’s sigil. Armoured panels encase its lower levels, and Techmarines aboard Tekton-pattern Rhinos work side by side with Mechanicum servitors to transform it into something resembling a strongpoint.
Before the invasion, the building was owned by a trading cartel founded in the time of Guilliman’s adoptive father. It is named Konor’s Arch, but is now known as the Ultimus. Its robust infrastructure and powerful data-engines – designed to link subsidiary operations across the Five Hundred Worlds – make it the perfect base from which to conduct offensive operations against the remaining Word Bearers.
Such concerns are vital, but once again the symbolism of the structure is paramount.
Hundreds of temporary structures surround the Ultimus, overspill from the levels above. So great were the numbers of refugees fleeing Lanshear that the upper levels quickly filled, and Ventanus had no option but to allow billets to be set up around his command post. He doesn’t like it, but has little choice in the matter. There is simply nowhere else for them to go.
Word of their coming has reached the refugees, and people cluster at the edge of the clearway that leads to the gates of the Ultimus. People cheer and wave and clap. They shout his name, and once again call him saviour. He keeps his expression neutral, but catches sight of Sydance’s amusement.
‘You might not like the connotation, but The Saviour of Calth has a nice ring to it,’ says Sydance. ‘It’s a title that’ll stick, mark my words.’
‘So what do they call you?’
‘I haven’t decided yet,’ says Sydance with a grin. ‘But we’ll all have titles by the end of this.’
Ventanus walks on. He knows Sydance is right, but it still irks him to have the mantle of saviour thrust upon him. He dislikes the self-aggrandisement and its faintly theological undertones, but is canny enough to know that nothing he can do now will stop its spread.
‘So, are you going to say it?’ asks Sydance.
‘Say what?’
‘That you were right after all, and that I was wrong.’
‘I don’t need to,’ says Ventanus. ‘The truth is self-evident. Six hundred Word Bearers dead without the loss of a single warrior.’
‘Yes, very impressive,’ agrees Sydance, placing two fingers to his forehead and narrowing his eyes as though in a trance. ‘I see many laurels in your future, great statues built in your likeness and a name that echoes through eternity.’
Ventanus allows a thin smile to surface. ‘I will shoot you if you use those psychic powers again.’
Sydance laughs and turns from Ventanus and addresses the two sergeants behind him.
‘Barkha, Selaton, good job.’
The sergeants acknowledge his words, but do not reply.
Ventanus looks up and sees Server Tawren and her newly-acquired retinue of lexmechanics, calculus-logi and data-savants approaching. He is still learning the nuances of human interactions – something forced upon him by increased contact with the populace of Calth in recent weeks – but has become familiar with the hybrid machine/flesh expressions of the Mechanicum.
Tawren has the chimeric qualities common to the members of the Martian priesthood – detachment, aloofness and a disconnect that some see as cold – but right now Ventanus sees nothing of detachment, nothing of disconnect.
What he sees in Tawren’s face is an abyss of all too human despair.
‘Something has happened,’ he says. ‘What is it?’
‘CV427/Praxor is gone,’ says Tawren. ‘Two others as well.’
‘Gone?’ he says. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It means that they are radioactive craters hundreds of kilometres wide,’ says Tawren.
XII
Theoretical: deny the Word Bearers the chance to regroup.
Practical: achieve the same for the defenders of Calth.
Result: bring the Ultramarines back into the fight against the Warmaster.
These are the prime directives by which the XIII are opera
ting, but knowing them and achieving them are two very different things.
Gathered around the central plotting table in a gleaming conference chamber that now serves as Calth’s command centre are the men and women Ventanus needs to turn that theoretical into a workable practical.
Sydance and Urath stand shoulder to shoulder, his fellow Fourth Company captain half a head taller than the sergeant of the 39th. Though his rank is inferior to that of Sydance, the hard-faced Urath has given fresh purpose to the scattered survivors of Sullus’s company.
Ventanus will see to it that he receives a captaincy for that.
Server Tawren consults with her Martian acolytes. He cannot see it, but knows there will be a haze of noospheric information buzzing around their heads in veils of data-light. She sifts invisible information with her hands. Behind her, a brutish skitarii clan chief stands, hulking and primitive looking. He has nothing of the calm poise of Cyramica, and is clearly a much lower ranking battle leader. His limbs are sheathed in metal and the lower half of his skull is a tusked, metallic trap like a greenskin’s jaw.
Colonel Hamadri consults a data-slate, her face set in an expression of cold determination. She has a son in the Numinus 61st, but has no knowledge of whether he is alive or dead. Statistical probability favours the latter, but until such time as his death can be confirmed, Hamadri will believe him alive.
This is good. Ventanus needs people around him who can hope against the odds.
Across from Hamadri is Captain Volper Ullyet of the 77th Ingenium Support Division, a heavily-built career officer who in fifty years of service has never left Calth or seen combat before the last few weeks. At first glance, he is an unlikely choice for the command table, but Ventanus sees beyond his service record to his actions during the initial phase of the attack.
Where the shock of the Word Bearers attack left others stupefied, Ullyet reacted in moments. Within four minutes of the attack’s commencement, his battalions of construction engines and earth moving machines were raising redoubts and defensive bulwarks around the main gates of Lanshear’s central arcology.
This, too, is good. Ventanus needs people who can react with speed.
Ingenium Subiaco stands close to Tawren, and his pleasure at being in the presence of a Mechanicum adept is obvious. Subiaco has only the most superficial augmetics, none that cannot be easily removed, and he hero-worships those who commune so directly with the Machine-God. Ankrion tells Ventanus that Subiaco is doing good work in the tunnels, securing the multitude of potential entry points to Arcology X.
The man is exhausted, but refuses to take his rest.
All the mortals are tertiary forces, reservists or commands designated to be rear-echelon units. Most are filled with raw recruits, soldiers raised specifically for the campaign against the Ghaslakh xenohold, a campaign Ventanus now understands to be entirely fictive. The forces still at Lanshear port when the sun died were the last to be embarked, fresh regiments, engineering units or logistical support elements.
Almost none are front-line certified.
Sydance tells Ventanus repeatedly that they are not ready for what he asks of them, and the stark light of the chamber only seems to confirm this. Every face is pinched and knurled with loss and shock. Sydance is right, they are not ready, but Ventanus believes that treachery has honed their previously unfinished edge. Complacency has been purged from their bones by the devastation above.
None beyond the Legion warriors were known to Ventanus before he made Arcology X his base of operations, but he knows them all now. He has made it his business to learn their strengths, their weaknesses and all the human foibles he must factor into his plans. Some think he wastes his time in attempting to understand mortals, but Ventanus knows better.
The only way Space Marines can now function alongside mortals is to understand them.
‘Server?’ says Ventanus. ‘Apprise me.’
Tawren nods and subcutaneous light shimmers through her fingers as she manipulates the plotting table with quick haptic gestures. A static-washed holographic of a giant, smoke-filled crater appears on the table, a hundred kilometres across. It blights the landscape and always will. Pixelated vapour clouds the size of cities are tugged by rogue thermals and atomic vortices.
‘You have all heard the news from CV427/Praxor,’ she says.
‘And the others,’ says Colonel Hamadri, her thin face blotchy with untreated rad-burn. ‘We lost more than two million people last night.’
Heads nod; the scale of death too terrible to contemplate. Such a vast number is difficult to visualise, too enormous for proper comprehension. Hamadri is a Defence Auxilia colonel, young to hold such rank. Ventanus sees she has heart and that will count for a great deal in the coming years. Hamadri kept her units on the surface as long as possible to allow the greatest number of refugees access to the arcology.
‘Do we know what happened?’ asks Sydance.
‘CV427/Praxor was an armaments stockpile for the orbital platforms and Legion warships,’ says Tawren. ‘Given the electro-magnetic signatures and recorded yields from the three blast sites, it seems likely that enemy infiltrators were able to modify and detonate a number of warheads from the cyclonic torpedoes stored there.’
‘How is that possible?’ demands Hamadri. ‘Those weapons are under Mechanicum protection. Don’t you people have security systems in place to stop that kind of thing? It’s your fault they’re dead!’
Tawren is visibly distressed by Hamadri’s accusation and her knuckles whiten as she grips the edge of the plotter table. Holographic clouds bend towards her in response.
‘That’s enough, colonel,’ says Ventanus. His tone leaves no room to argue, but Tawren raises a hand. She does not need him to defend her and answers Hamadri with remarkable calm.
‘Yes, we have ritual protocols to prevent such breaches, but the systemic corruption introduced to the planetary noosphere compromised a great many of our liturgical security systems.’
‘I thought your killcode got rid of it,’ says Hamadri.
Tawren nods. ‘The killcode of Magos Hesst burned the enemy scrapcode in a firestorm of numerical carnage, yes, but one that was indiscriminate in its purging. Many of our own systems were left crippled in the wake of the restoration of command authority. Those systems are even now being restored.’
‘So could this happen again?’ asks Ullyet.
‘I have personally inspected the security protocols at all other such weapon caches,’ says Tawren.
‘That’s not what I asked,’ says Ullyet.
‘Yes, it is,’ replies Tawren and her certainty is palpable.
Ullyet nods, the matter settled.
‘So how do we answer this atrocity?’ Sydance asks. ‘We’ll hit the bastards hard for this.’
They respond to Sydance’s words, and Ventanus sees the desire for vengeance in every face. He remembers his fellow captain espousing the same retributive mantra upon his arrival at Leptius Numinus. It is a primal and eminently understandable urge to strike back at those who have wronged them, but it is as ill-advised now as it was then.
Ventanus leans forward and places both hands on the edge of the table.
‘We answer by staying alive to finish the fight,’ he says. ‘We continue co-ordinating what forces remain combat-effective and devise a practical from that. The dead of Praxor are gone, and nothing will bring them back. Grieve when Calth is free, but while you are in this room, you all belong to me. Understand and accept that or get out.’
Stony silence greets his words. They hate his cold objectivity, his apparent lack of concern for the dead. Ventanus cares nothing for their approval. But he has to give them something, some spark to light the fire in their hearts. He is not good with such words, and these are the best he can do.
‘The Word Bearers will pay for this, but this war will not be won with impulse, it will be won with
cool heads and solid practical. We fight for the living and we kill for the dead. Say it with me.’
The silence stretches.
‘Say it with me,’ he says again.
Heads nod, fists are made over hearts.
‘We fight for the living and we kill for the dead!’
XIII
Radioactive winds howl across Leprium, sounding hot and crackling in his helmet. The counter reads high, but his war-plate can withstand this intensity for days before its systems will need time to recharge. Maloq Kartho looks up into a sky laced with a poisoned borealis and heartsick rainbows of stellar fallout. The cascade of exotic particles and heavy metals will leave Calth a polluted wasteland from now until its star finally burns out and engulfs the entire Veridian system.
For all Kartho knows, that could be in millions of years or it could be tomorrow.
He cares not either way. He will never return to Calth.
It is reckless to stand so brazenly on the surface, but the powers to whom he owes fealty demand no less. Devastation surrounds him, the sprawling ruin of a dead city: twisted steel, shattered permacrete and broken glass. Upturned tanks and supply containers that fell from the ruptured bellies of bulk tenders straining for orbit are scattered everywhere.
Amidst the destruction, a statue fashioned from bronze, but now heavy with grey ash, stands at the end of a grand processional. It is a heroic representation of the mortal who raised Guilliman as his own.
Konor, the first Battle King of Macragge.
Bodies lie in drifts around the statue, as though the doomed populace of Leprium believed his legacy might somehow protect them from the slaughter. Kartho pities them their ignorance of the galaxy’s true divine masters.
A wrecked Imperator Titan stands sentinel over the ruins, hot, neutron-rich vortices gusting between its legs and sagging carapace. Its chest battlements are blown out and half its head section is missing. Grey dust falls in drifts from its listing carapace, but it is impossible to tell whether its loyalty was to Horus or the Emperor.
‘One of ours or one of theirs?’ asks Hol Beloth, emerging from the shelter of a tumbledown ruin of flooring plates and corrugated roof slabs. The commander has embraced his duty of atrocity with all the zeal one would expect of one of Lorgar’s sons. The murder of the civilian shelters has galvanised him, and the touch of the Bloody One fills his body with power.
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