Saturnine

by Dan Abnett

  Halen led the way up the combat ramp, shouting orders. Wall reserves raised lances and spontoons upright in attention as they passed, banners and company oriflammes billowing like sea snakes in the wind. Sanguinius held Sepatus back for a moment.

  ‘On the subject of a special action, Bel,’ he said softly, ‘I need you to take your best squad, quit the line, and return to the Sanctum Imperialis.’

  Bel Sepatus’ face darkened. ‘Why in the name of Terra would I do that?’ he asked.

  ‘I received a communication an hour ago, conveyed directly and in great confidence from the Sigillite. He requests my best squad, and my best man, without delay.’

  ‘For what purpose?’

  ‘It did not specify, and I did not ask.’

  ‘I won’t leave your side, lord. Not at this hour. And I am concerned for you. I have heard-‘

  ‘Will you obey my commands, Bel?’ Sanguinius asked.

  ‘Always.’

  ‘Then this is my command. You, and your best squad, to the Sanctum.’

  Sepatus ground his jaw for a moment, then nodded.

  ‘The Praetorian has need of you,’ said Sanguinius. ‘It is some matter too delicate for transmission.’

  ‘Dorn has his own men,’ said Sepatus.

  ‘If my brother has need of better angels,’ said Sanguinius, ‘I do not question him. The Praetorian commands over all. We follow his strategies, or the siege falls apart. His understanding of this war is far broader and more comprehensive than mine.’

  Sepatus exhaled gently, steadying his silent wrath.

  ‘I’ll pass command of my formations to Satel Aimery,’ he said. ‘I’ll take second squad. The Katechon. I will…’

  ‘Bel?’

  ‘I will miss the glory of this day,’ said Sepatus sadly.

  Sanguinius placed a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Glory, Bel,’ he said, ‘awaits you wherever you walk.’

  The wall top was thick with troop lines, metal glinting in the bright haze. Sanguinius rejoined Halen. Below them, the vast circuit wall quivered as bulk auto-hoists brought load after load of munitions up to the macro-gun casemates. Above them, in the wan light, observation balloons drifted like low, stray planets caught in nets of golden braid, their pict systems whirring. Sanguinius could hear gunfire rippling from the line to his left. Pioneer parties were running an assault about half a kilometre down, and the wall guns were driving them back with desultory bursts.

  To his right, about a kilometre and a half out, the traitor Warhounds had returned, making gun-charges out of the ruins of the third circuit wall to strafe and harass the wall below Parfane Tower. They had brought friends, six or seven Warhounds in total, and a supporting unit of corrupted Questor Knights. The tower’s guns were clapping the air with their response. Blooms of white smoke from each salvo drifted along the wall. Sanguinius heard a cheer rise and build, rolling across the wall emplacements with the gliding smoke. A Warhound had been struck and brought down. He could see its twitching carcass, on fire, in the blasted gully short of the wall.

  Sanguinius mounted the observation alure where Lord Seneschal Rann, Khoradal Furio and three lords militant of the Imperial Army were positioned.

  ‘They are working themselves up,’ was all Rann said.

  ‘I’d need to work myself up a little, if I was coming against us,’ said Sanguinius.

  Fafnir Rann chuckled.

  ‘I don’t think it will be a mass wave,’ said Sanguinius. They tried that yesterday, and it won them a lot, but it broke at the final step. And it cost them.’ The ground, far below them, was still contoured with mounds of rotting dead. ‘They’re wary,’ he said. ‘Stung. They’ll probe, then drive at a section or sections they perceive as weak.’

  ‘None are weak,’ said Rann.

  Sanguinius smiled. From a Blood Angel, that remark would sound like stubborn pride. From an Imperial Fist, it sounded like an operational mantra.

  So I in told, Fafnir,’ he said. ‘But pay attention, and watch for wavering I expect two or perhaps three main drives, and they’ll come at once.’

  He stared out. The shattered, jagged shadows of the third circuit wall were a kilometre away. Beyond them, the overwhelmed ruins of outer circuits and the outworks. All of that, lost in one savage day. A great stain of smoke hung low over the enemy-possessed ruins. He could hear the constant batter of kettle-drumming, and see signs of bulk movement stirring in the gloom. A build-up. There was chanting too. Enemy voices, chanting together, but boned out by the distant. The same words.

  The Emperor must die! The Emperor must die!

  Sanguinius closed his eyes, and saw different smoke, different ruins.

  No. No, not now.

  The other mind was there again, eclipsing his, a heat pulsing behind his eyes. The felt the fraternal bond that could never be broken, the raw hatred that could never be understood, the rage that could never be reasoned with.

  Angron. Another angel. A redder angel. Where was he? Sanguinius tried to see. Just smoke. Just rubble.

  He thought of the Sigillite’s message that had taken Bel Sepatus from him. Malcador had simply asked, and Sanguinius had given, without question. How dearly he wanted to consult, to ask Malcador a question of his own. How do I still my mind? How do I keep these visions at bay? How do I stop the thoughts of my brothers invading my head?

  What do the visions mean?

  There was no one question. He wanted to know what use the visions were, or why they were now, as it seemed, continuous and contemporary. They had once been fleeting scraps of possible futures, little flashes he could ignore. Now they were the present, or the near future. Now they were constant, and as draining as a migraine.

  That was no simple message to send, or simple answer to receive. To dissect his visions, and their cause and meaning, he would need to sit with the Sigillite, in person and in private, and spend hours unravelling it all.

  He had neither the time nor opportunity for that. It would have to wait.

  Maybe that was for the best. His greatest fear was that if he told Malcador, or Rogal, or anybody, they might deem him unfit. At best, perhaps, just troubled. At worst, they might believe it to be the first symptoms of creeping corruption, some deep flaw in him forced open by the sly ministries of the warp, like the tiniest crack in a bastion wall: prised at first, then widened by hammered wedges, then undermined and opened, until the wall collapsed under its own fissured weight, and the enemy tide flushed in to take the bastion entire.

  They might order his removal from command. From the line. From the war. What was the term the Imperial Fists used? Non-vi. As good as dead.

  The loyalist cause could not afford to lose a primarch. But Gorgon Bar could not afford an unfit one.

  Fight it. Fight it!

  Sanguinius opened his eyes, but the vision stubbornly remained, beating like a war drum. He saw it overlaid across the scene of mounded dead, smoke-drift and the shattered third circuit wall.

  He saw another wall, whole as yet. Monsalvant Gard. A rain of bombarding fire. The rising towers, spines and peaks of Eternity Wall Port.

  Angron was assaulting the port. The approach to Monsalvant had become Angron’s next gladiatorial arena.

  The Child of the Mountain, for all he had tried, had never left the slave pit.

  * * *

  The Pons Solar had fallen. The East Arterial was gone. The vast yards of Western Freight were all but overrun. The port’s garrison had retreated behind the barrier wall, and only that, and the heavy fire of the defence systems, had brought the swarming World Eaters to a temporary halt.

  The enemy had brought rams, huge column rams they wielded through brute manual force. They were pounding at the gate blocks and the sealed cargo entrances of Western Freight. On the loading ramps and cage-ways behind the barrier wall, troop strengths were lining up and loading, ready to hold the choke points of these precious causeways if the gates broke.

&nb
sp; Niborran carried a lasrifle, slung across his shoulder. Every able body would count from now on. The chandeliers above him shivered and tinkled. They had claimed a reception hall in Tower Seven of the barrier wall to use as a meeting room.

  ‘Batteries?’ he asked.

  ‘Another six hours,’ replied Brohn, ‘if we maintain the firing rate.’

  ‘And we’ve requested-‘

  ‘Munition fulfilment from Bhab?’ Brohn asked. ‘Twice in the last hour alone. No response. No signal. I’ve had bulk landing pads cleared anyway.’

  Maps and sheaves of documents had been spread out on the reception hall’s long teak tables, a parody of the extravagant buffets laid on for worthy off-world dignitaries.

  ‘Six hours…’ said Niborran.

  ‘For solid shells,’ said Shiban. ‘All energy and las-platforms will sustain longer, if we draw power from the port’s reactors.’

  ‘We’ll need heavy cabling, secure networks,’ Niborran said.

  ‘In expectation of that need, I’ve had crews start work on the infrastructure,’ said Shiban.

  ‘I wasn’t told,’ said Brohn. ‘We can’t spare fighting men from the-‘ ‘Civilian labour,’ said Shiban, not even looking at him. ‘Technicians and labourers from the port guilds, longshoremen, cargo handlers. There are twenty-nine thousand non-combatants trapped in the port zone too. That seems to have been forgotten.’

  Brohn scowled. ‘All right, then,’ he said.

  ‘Can they be armed?’ asked Niborran.

  ‘When it comes to it, general,’ said Shiban, ‘I think they’ll want to be.’

  ‘Armour?’ asked Niborran.

  ‘We lost nearly a third of our complement with the Pons Solar,’ said Shiban.

  ‘The bridge was a mistake,’ growled Brohn. ‘The bridge was a bloody mistake. Intel said they were coming from the south. We should have mined the bridge down. There. Is that what you want to hear me say?’

  He stared at Shiban Khan. A cocktail of terror and anger had done alarming things to his expression.

  ‘I don’t need to hear you say anything,’ said Shiban.

  ‘If the bridge is gone,’ said Cadwalder, quietly from behind Niborran, ‘then Lord Diaz…’

  ‘Lost,’ said Tsutomu.

  ‘Lost or dead?’ asked Cadwalder. ‘Please specify.’

  The Custodian glanced briefly to his left. He paused, then he looked back at Cadwalder.

  ‘Dead,’ he said. ‘Dead along with almost all who stood with him.’ ‘Are we certain?’ the Huscarl asked.

  ‘She saw his body herself, during the retreat,’ said Tsutomu expressionlessly. ‘Still on the bridge, surrounded by the slain. He had not taken a step back.’

  Niborran frowned. He had almost asked which ‘she’ the Custodian was referring to. Then he remembered, and glimpsed the smudge of light on Tsutomu’s left. It was so bizarrely easy to forget about her, to miss her. And her presence explained the deathly air in the room.

  No, he thought, it didn’t. This wasn’t the depressing malaise of her null effect. This was the moment, the plight they found themselves in.

  ‘Again,’ he said, ‘I thank our sister for her efforts. Many lives were saved because of her. Lord Diaz is a hard loss. Terra, they all are. We will prevail here simply so we can mourn them later. I am reminded of a doctrine cherished by the Imperial Fists. Achievement through sacrifice.’

  He clapped his hands briskly.

  ‘Let’s to our stations,’ he said. ‘I want the troops rallied and ready. Be visible. Stick to the plan. If the gates break, compartmentalise. Seal and close, one step at a time. The vox is clearly damned, so we’ll use hardline links between operation points. Orskode, or Hortcode. Simple, basic.’

  The garrison commanders nodded. Brohn saluted.

  ‘Khan?’ Niborran called as they turned to go. ‘A word.’

  Niborran stepped out onto a balcony that faced the port megastructure. Shiban followed him. Cadwalder followed too. He ghosted the High Primary General wherever he went. Outside, the noise of unwavering assault was much louder.

  ‘Is this about Brohn?’ Shiban Khan asked.

  Niborran glanced at him, puzzled. ‘What? No. I…’

  He turned to face Shiban.

  ‘Your instinct for defence has been excellent since day one. Since before I arrived. I’ve taken your counsel, but not enough of it.’

  ‘We make our decisions in good faith, general,’ said Shiban. ‘You do, I think. I haven’t had the honour of knowing you long, but I believe this is true of you.’

  ‘I appreciate you saying that,’ said Niborran. ‘This situation, khan, this fight… I fear I’ve been taking too much of a textbook approach. Standard operational strategies, reliable ones-‘

  ‘Such as?’ asked Shiban.

  ‘Trying to keep arteries open in the expectation of further relief and reinforcement,’ Niborran replied. ‘That was foolish. An error forced by human hope, which is something you don’t seem to suffer from.’

  ‘Hope is not an error, general,’ said Shiban.

  ‘It is when one knows, for a fact, that there is nothing to hope for,’ said Niborran. ‘I knew, and yet I allowed myself to hope. I set out my lines according to standard operation…’

  ‘Knew what?’ asked Shiban.

  ‘That no one is coming,’ said Niborran. ‘That we face this with what we have, and nothing more. I-‘

  He stopped. Shiban had raised a hand to halt him.

  ‘How did you know that, general?’ he asked.

  Niborran glanced quickly at Cadwalder, then sighed. He unfastened his overcoat, took out a cigar, and lit it with slightly trembling fingers.

  ‘It shouldn’t matter, khan,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter now. I should have assumed it from the first moment. Expect the worst, and any thing else can only be better. I should have tossed out the rules of standard operation, and implemented ruthless…’

  He exhaled blue smoke, and looked at Shiban. ‘Too much of the old Saturnine Ordos schooled into me,’ he said. The discipline, the rigidity, the devotion to codified rules of war. I see I must break out of the prison of those habits. The truth is, the port was understrength and underprepared from the very start. We must act on the principle that no one is coming to our aid. Treat that as a certainty. By implementing the strategies you suggested-‘

  ‘It’s too late to implement any of them now,’ said Shiban. ‘The enemy is here, and it has already determined the path of battle.’

  Niborran nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But forget the tactical specifics. The spirit of your intent still holds true. We only have what we have. We make best use of that. Best use of finite resources’ He gestured towards the soaring towers and pylons of the port. ‘How finite does that look to you?’ he asked.

  Shiban did not reply.

  ‘We are woefully short of dedicated military personnel and materiel,’ Niborran said, ‘but we have a whole port sitting there. How many non-coms did you say?’

  ‘Twenty-nine thousand,’ replied Shiban.

  ‘Right. Many of them technical specialists, port crews and personnel.’ ‘Many are just civilians. Refugees from Magnifican-‘

  ‘Even so, we have specialists. Pilots, ferrymen, engineers, mechanics.’ Niborran took out a dataslate. ‘I ran checks on port cargo inventory. Nine billion tonnes of freight, still sitting here. That includes munition loads destined for Anterior. There’s at least a thousand lasrifles packed in shipment crates. Fourteen hundred autoguns. Two payloads of trench mortars.’

  ‘So we can arm a few,’ said Shiban.

  ‘It’s not just munitions,’ said Niborran. ‘Not just unshipped cargo. The space port is packed with specialised equipment. Systems and devices we can employ defensively.’

  ‘Asset-strip the port?’

  ‘To hold the port.’

  ‘It’s a question of manpower-‘

  ‘And we have unutil
ised manpower, hiding in shelters. And on the pylons and platforms, we have seven hundred and nine small craft. Lighters, ferries, tugs, shuttles, wherries-‘

  ‘Are you proposing an evacuation?’ asked Shiban.

  ‘No,’ said Niborran. ‘Our orders are to hold the port, not abandon it. And anyway, nothing is going to fly clear through this. But a Sysiphos-class tug, khan, it carries a massively over-muscled gravity array. It can drag a medium shiftship into low-anchor dock. If we get those arrays down here, to the surface, strip them out, mount them laterally…’

  ‘Improvised gravity weapons.’

  ‘Gravity walls, gravity screens,’ Niborran nodded. ‘Immensely powerful. Not even berserk World Eaters could claw their way through. At maximum output, a grav-array would turn them into paste.’

  Shiban nodded. ‘What do we need?’

  ‘Lightermen to get them operational and move them down-pylon to the base platforms. Technicians to disassemble. Handlers and bulk servitors to move them and position them. Engineers to rig them.’

  ‘We don’t have much time,’ said Shiban.

  ‘The garrison is buying us all the time it can,’ Niborran replied. ‘The civilian and labour force will need motivation if they’re going to act fast. They’ll listen to a legionary. Jump to his word.’

  ‘I was expecting to fight,’ said Shiban.

  ‘You will be fighting, Shiban Khan,’ said Niborran, ‘just not in a conventional fashion. Besides, once the enemy becomes aware of what we’re doing, and it won’t take them long, they will try to stop you. They want the port, but 1 don’t think the World Eaters care how intact it is.’

  Shiban nodded. ‘I’ll need a few men as supervisors’

  ‘Of course. Pick well, and be sparing.’

  Niborran switched his half-smoked cigar to his left hand, and held out his right. Shiban hesitated, then shook it gently.

  ‘No backward step,’ said Niborran. ‘Your doctrine, I believe? Lord Diaz told me that.’

  ‘No backward step,’ Shiban replied.

  The White Scar left the balcony without looking back. Niborran glanced at Cadwalder.

  ‘I want you on the line, Huscarl,’ he said.