Saturnine

by Dan Abnett

  ‘A shame, lord,’ said Abaddon.

  ‘I don’t see it,’ said Eidolon. ‘What are you referring to?’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Abaddon. ‘Trust me when I say it’s a shame.’

  A glare of rancid light bathed them all. Tall figures solidified inteleport fields, on the platform nearby: Ahriman of the Thousand Sons, regal and impassive, accompanied by initiated warriors; Typhus of the Death Guard; three archmagi of the Dark Mechanicum; Krostovok, acting Legion commander of the small Night Lords contingent active on Terra; and four lords militant of the Traitor Army host.

  ‘I see we are all gathered at last,’ said Perturabo. ‘I’ll brief now, so you may all communicate my directives to your respective forces.’

  * * *

  At Gorgon Bar, nine hours of uninterrupted shelling suddenly came to an end, as though a switch had been thrown.

  Halen threw a switch of his own, a neural signal that deactivated the noise suppression systems of his helmet. He still felt deaf, as though his ears had blown, but he realised he could hear himself moving, hear the scrape of ceramite as he clambered out of the blast box.

  ‘Look alive,’ he said. The dust-caked visors of his brother Imperial Fists watched him. He hand signed: restore audio. They began to stir.

  ‘Look alive,’ he repeated, now they could hear him. ‘We know what’s coming next.’

  Halen pushed through the blast curtains, and moved down the narrow defile to the front of the casemate. His mind was still adjusting. After almost nine hours of generated white noise to withstand the constant, jarring onslaught, the stillness and quiet seemed unnatural.

  It had been impossible to maintain vigil on the outworks. The saturated shelling had been too intense. Traitor armour and artillery had focused their wrath on a three-kilometre stretch of the outworks: squadrons of Stormhammers, Fellblades and other super-heavies, hulls down, Basilisks, Medusas, thousands of bombards; Venator and Krios units of the Dark Mechanicum. None were visible; all were firing from rubble fields and dead plazas eight kilometres out, files after files of them, discharging in concert.

  The Space Marines had been obliged to pull the Imperial Army, Solar Auxilia and conscript strengths off the outworks and the first circuit wall. No humans could withstand the ceaseless noise and concussion, not even those in heavier field armour. Their human cohorts had been sent back to the hardened bunkers and subsurface shelters to the rear of the second circuit wall, leaving their emplacements and wall batteries unmanned. Even there, shuttered in dark, shaking pits, there had been casualties, as overshots sailed across the outer lines, striking the second circuit or dropping behind it to split open bunkers.

  The Imperial Fists had stayed on alone, and even they had been unable to hold guard at the wall. Suppression dampers active, they had sheltered in the blast boxes built into the back of the first circuit – compartments of rockcrete, ceramite supports and ballistic sacking that they had further reinforced by wedging their siege shields against the exterior wall and sitting with their backs to them.

  Still, they had died too. Four boxes had been hit and gutted by high explosives, and in others, including the blast box where Halen had been sheltering, superheated shrapnel fragments had punched through the shuddering wall, perforating rockcrete, lagging, siege shields and the brothers huddled behind them.

  Fisk Halen, captain of 19th Tactical Company, recognised that this was merely the prelude.

  He stepped up onto the silence of the first circuit wall. Brown dust hung in the air all around, making it seem as if his wall position were the only patch of the world left. He’d expected the worst, but it was worse still. The front edge and parapet of the bulwark looked as though it had been gnawed away by a ravenous giant: ashlar blocks split and bitten through, the parapet entirely blown out in many places, buttressing reduced to shingle, the thick armour facings of the wall crumpled and shredded like metal foil. Most of the wall guns, the macro cannons, rotary nests, las-platforms, were gone.

  ‘Assemble,’ he told his brothers as they clambered out around him. ‘Make good. Begin vigil. Tarchos? Call the Army strengths back into position. Quickly.’

  ‘Captain,’ said Sergeant Tarchos.

  ‘And get me a link to the second circuit batteries. We’re going to need them.’

  ‘How do we hold this?’ asked Brother Uswalt.

  ‘I doubt we do,’ replied Halen.

  ‘Agreed,’ said Rann, moving along the shattered line to join them.

  Halen threw the lord seneschal a quick salute. His men began to do the same.

  ‘No ceremony, brothers,’ said Fafnir Rann. There was no time to waste on decorum.

  He stood beside Halen, gazing out into the eerie haze of dust. Their optic units clicked and whirred as they tried to adjust for distance and definition. Halen was aware how stiffly the lord seneschal, captain of the First Assault Cadre, had been moving. He’d taken wounds at the Lion’s Gate action. He wasn’t close to being healed.

  ‘Sudden cessation,’ remarked Halen. ‘Does he think we’re broken?’

  ‘He works on percentages,’ replied Rann. ‘Nine hours shelling, whatever percentage saturation, however many thousand tonnes of munitions. Enough to break our teeth and whip us to our knees. Then round two.’

  They called him ‘he’. They meant Perturabo. He was the personification of their foe, the demigod they faced. Not the Warmaster. Horus was the toxic spirit of malice that inspired the traitor host. Perturabo, Lord of Iron, was the instrument of execution, the facilitator of Horus’ will. Though Perturabo was probably hundreds of kilometres away, it was his decisions and doctrines they were fighting. He was their line opponent, the architect of the traitors’ scheme, though architect seemed the wrong word for a creature who brought walls down.

  ‘He thinks he’s softened us, does he?’ asked Halen.

  ‘Oh, I think he has, and he knows it, Fisk,’ said Rann. ‘First circuit and the outworks are hammered to non-vi. Let’s see what he pushes up. Maybe run interference for a few hours, give them a slap while we drop back to second or even third and dig in there.’

  Non-vi. Non-viable. Rann did not rate the first circuit wall as a viable defensive position. He clearly had doubts about the second circuit wall too.

  ‘If we pull to third,’ said Halen, ‘we’re reducing our opportunities.’

  ‘I know, Fisk, I know.’

  Gorgon Bar had formerly been known as Gorgon Gate when the Palace had still been a palace. ‘Bar’ denoted that it was a civilian structure converted into a fortification, as opposed to one built explicitly as a bastion. It was part of the outer ring, the initial circle defences on the approach to the Lion’s Gate and the Sanctum Imperialis. The Gorgon Gate had never been a fortress, just a magnificent triumphal arch on Anterior Way. The Praetorian had armoured it, just like he had armoured everything in the Imperial Palace, during the exhausting months of siege preparation. Decoration had been removed; walls reinforced and built out; utilitarian armour added to encase the once beautiful marble, ouslite and dressed ashlar. Four hemispheres of defences had been built before it, covering what had once been Trajanus Park and the Sonotine Gardens, Four hemispheres: four new, concentric circuit walls, bristling with casemats and defence batteries, and the outworks beyond them, all of them linked by redoubts and supportive trenchwork. In six mouths, the ceremonial gate, a site noted in monographs on palatial architecture for its tranquil beauty, had been retrofitted into an ugly, five-layer fortress.

  Halen understood why. Every prep simulation had shown it would he attacked. Why drive at the actual bastions and fortresses protecting the Lion’s Gate, like Colossi or Marmax, when you could break through a ceremonial landmark and drive all the way into the Sanctum itself?

  Gorgon would fall. Halen knew that, Rann knew it, Dorn knew it. Perturabo knew it. The question was, how long could it stand? How long could it delay the traitor advance? How much materiel cost could its defenders wring from
the traitor host in taking it? How much could it deplete enemy strengths before they reached the Lion’s Gate?

  ‘We’ve got partial aegis still,’ said Halen, checking his auspex. ‘Retaining void cover over eighty-eight per cent of the circuits.’

  ‘So it’ll come from the ground,’ Rann nodded. ‘Any armour?’

  ‘What we held was drawn back to third,’ said Halen. ‘Except the stuff from the first sorties.’

  At the start of the onslaught, fast Vindicator and Cerebus units had run from the ramparts to hunt and execute the bombarding forces, each hoping to get into their formation like a fox in a fowl-coop. But they’d failed. The tank destroyers had been obliterated by heavy flanking fire. As the dust began to clear slightly, Halen could see blackened hulks to the south, some still burning.

  ‘Draw armour forward, lord?’ Halen asked.

  Rann shook his head. ‘Just to have them roll back again? No, we’ll need them at two and three. But get them to stand to and wake engines.’

  Halen turned aside to issue vox instructions. Someone called out.

  It’ll come from the ground.

  Assault lines were approaching through the dust and fyceline fumes. Infantry in their thousands, fanned out, moving fast. Some light armour too: Predators, assault tanks, troop carriers, winnowing the blown dust back around them like the wakes of jetboats.

  The ground forces came first. Charging.

  ‘Line up,’ Rann commanded calmly. Siege shields clattered into place along what was left of the parapet. Bolters locked into firing loops. Crews cycled and turned what wall guns remained. Some refused to move or traverse, fused in place. Imperial Army support was still seven minutes away.

  Halen upped his optic gain. The charging horde, in hard zoom: abhuman beastkin, like fairytale ogres, spittle flying from wide, braying mouths; assault units of the Dark Mechanicum, like nightmares conjured from the very darkest ages of Technology; Traitor Army formations, brandishing banner-obscenities. Among them, hulking Death Guard and Iron Warrior legionaries, moving more slowly, advancing inexorably. Halen didn’t up his audio gain. He had no wish to hear the howling chant again.

  ‘Hold or withdraw, captain?’ he asked. There was still time to make the second circuit their line.

  ‘I’m tired of hearing them shout that,’ Rann replied. ‘I think we’ll stay and slit some throats.’

  Halen could hear the chant by then anyway.

  The Emperor must die! The Emperor must die!

  ‘Target,’ Rann commanded.

  All along the wall, a series of whirrs and chimes sounded as boltguns tanged and auto-locked.

  ‘What do you think, Fisk?’ Rann asked. ‘Thirty to one?’

  ‘Thirty-five, maybe forty.’

  ‘Praetorian odds,’ Rann replied. He took aim. Whirr-chime.

  ‘Another day on the wall,’ Halen replied.

  ‘Hah, for that, friend, you get the shout,’ said Rann. ‘Thirty metres out, please.’

  ‘Yes, Captain.’

  Halen raised his Phobos R/017, felt its targeting systems slave to

  his helm’s auto-senses. He had a perfect headshot on a striding IronWarrior. He ignored his target lock, and watched the distance meter climbing down Two hundred metres, one-seventy, one-fifty…

  ‘To your glory, brothers,’ he called out.

  ‘And the glory of Terra!’ they all sang back, even Rann.

  Seventy live metres, sixty, fifty, forty… thirty-five… thirty…

  ‘Commence,’ said Halen.

  The bolters began to fire. Sharp flashes stippled along the top of the circuit line and from defence boxes in the face of the wall. The first impacts were scored. Every hit a kill-shot. The front of the charging tide crumpled. Bodies broke mid-stride, exploded, toppled backwards, tripped others. Warriors fell, tumbling on the fallen ahead of them, or torn down by the next rain of bolt shells. The charging line hinged in on itself at its midsection, flank elements outstripping the punished centre. Halen barked instruction, and his own flank units cast wide, broadening the fields of fire to demolish the outrunners. Wall guns began to thump and chatter to his left and right. Traitor rows buckled. Mud and rubble blasted into the air.

  Fire was coming back at them. Loose and wild, fired on the run, but heavy, hammering at wall faces, parapet lines and shields. Then a few more-accurate shots, the bolter fire of Traitor Space Marines, their weapons motion-compensating. Brother Imperial Fists snapped back from the wall, heads blown off, chests blown out. Halen changed clips, feeling his siege shield buck as it took fire. Though its front ranks were mangled, the traitor host was still streaming out of the dust. More than they had imagined, so many more.

  They reached the outworks, pouring between shattered stone piers and cratered revetments. A dazzling storm of crossfire ripped between rampart and ground. At Halen’s command, his brothers moved to defensive pairs, one firing down the wall face to clean off anything or anyone attempting to scale, his partner standing to cover him with the rim of his shield while maintaining fire into the mass, Bodies began to pile up at the foot of the wall, heaped like dead leaves, half-submerged in the mud and the slime-skinned pools of waste-water that had formed between the revetment piers.

  The charge broke. The traitor host flowed backwards, staggering, disarrayed.

  ‘We’re persuaded them of their stupidity,’ Halen said.

  ‘No brother,’ said Rann. ‘That was a feint.’

  The traitor Warhounds strutted into view, emerging from the dust clouds, retreating infantry flooding around their ankles: three engines, Legio Vulpa, accelerating to fast advance. Behind them, more ponderous, lumbered a towering Warlord, a behemoth silhouette against the sickly, backlit dust. The wall began to tremble.

  Yes, a feint. Throw infantry at the first circuit to keep the Imperial Fists in position, prevent them from falling back, then run the Titans in to burn them where they stood. That’s how you wore down defences: bait and switch.

  ‘A bad call from me,’ Rann said to Halen.

  ‘No, lord-‘

  ‘Yes, it was,’ Rann snapped. He looked at Halen. ‘Prepare to draw us back fast,’

  Halen started to bark commands. The advancing engines were a daunting sight. Halen didn’t know the Warlord giant. It looked Mars Alpha-pattern, but it had changed, like so many of the brothers that they had once stood shoulder to shoulder with. Its crusade insignia was gone. Feral crests and crudely daubed sigils covered its flanks and its hull was blackened, as though it had walked a thousand leagues through roasting flame to face them. Chains swayed from its limbs and groin, and tattered banners proclaimed filthy concepts in runes that made Halen’s gorge rise. What he first took for heads he realised were naked human corpses swinging from the chains. The engine looked sick, skeletal, its stride uneven as if limping, though from chronic disease rather than injury. Its armoured head, hunched between the massive yoke of its gun-platform shoulders, had been refashioned into the form of a massive human skull. Cockpit lights glowed in the eye sockets, and rotary cannons protruded through the open, screaming jaws like tongues. War-horns boomed. The hound-Titans escorting it, similarly malformed, stalked like flightless birds, first rushing ahead of their giant dam, then edging back skittishly to stay at the Warlord’s heels and retain formation.

  ‘Solemnis Bellus’ muttered Rann.

  ‘You know it?’ asked Halen.

  ‘Barely,’ Rann replied. ‘Just a few traces left of the engine it once was. Throne, I weep to see such a glorious weapon so debased.’

  The weapons of the advancing engines began to fire. Mega-bolter. Turbo laser. Torrents of blast-shot from the rotator mounts of the three hounds. Devastation ripped across the circuit line. Ferrocrete shattered. Wall sections erupted, collapsing in avalanches of masonry, dust, flame and plate debris. Yellow-armoured bodies were tossed into the air. Casemate 16 subsided, the throat of its turret torn out, its entire gun platform sliding off its mount and drop
ping down the wall face, munitions cooking off in a frenzied stream of overlapping detonations.

  ‘Fall back!’ Halen yelled into the vox. ‘Fall back to second now!’ A blast took him off his feet. Grit and flame swirled around him. A strong arm pulled him to his feet.

  ‘No, brother,’ the Angel said, looking down into Halen’s cracked visor. ‘No need. Not yet.’

  Sanguinius let him go, and turned to the mangled lip of the wall. He leapt off, into the wallowing curtains of fire, wings unfurled.

  ‘Did I see that?’ asked Rann, hauling Halen into cover.

  ‘He’s with us,’ Halen replied.

  The Great Angel wasn’t alone. Legionaries were rushing onto the wall line from the defiles and back access wells. Warriors in blood-red plate gripped brothers of the VII by the hands in greeting as they pushed forward, pulling them back, giving them a moment to reload and reset while they took over the positions. The bolters of the Blood

  Angels began to roar.

  Fresh blood, but still just blood. Even concentrating their fire, the

  guns of the Space Marines couldn’t bring down a war engine.

  The Great Angel of Baal was another thing altogether. He soared across the slopes of rubble at the foot of the crippled wall, across the tumbled and twisted enemy corpses brought down by the Imperial Fists, into miasmal fog of dust and smoke and fire, surging on powerful wingbeats that spiral-eddied the smoke in his wake.

  He swept low, like a hunting eagle, banked magnificently between the streams of turbo laser fire trying to track him, and ploughed into the snout of the nearest Warhound. He drove his spear straight

  through the top of its command compartment, through inhuman symbols, through ancient armour, through sub-system skins, through power trains. It dug deep. Sanguinius twisted the haft, feet braced on the full canopy, wings beating hard to maintain balance. The Warhound squealed and faltered, a misstep, cumbersome weapon limbs flailing in a vain attempt to brush its attacker off its face, like a child flailing against a hornet’s persistent attention.