by Dan Abnett
‘So, do we rally and assist him with-‘
‘Let him prove himself,’ said Magnus. ‘Let him show Lupercal what he can do. We sapped their spirit, wore them down-‘
‘But we failed to dose,’ said Ahriman. ‘Dorn will see this as a victory.’
‘Dorn can continue to delude himself,’ said the Crimson King. ‘Let Jaghatai and Constantin celebrate. It will be their last chance. This was no failure, my son. I got what I came for.’
He walked away, down the wind-scoured steps of broken Corbenic.
Ahriman followed. There were preparations to make.
* * *
Katarin Elg sat up straight, and peered at her display.
‘Confirm that track,’ she said.
‘Confirmed,’ said the operator beside her.
‘What do you have?’ Diamantis asked, stepping forward.
‘Target track,’ she replied. ‘We have just managed to tease it out of the acoustic backwash. It’s a faint echo, barely visible against whatever fury is hammering against the wall.’
She looked at him.
‘Confirmed sub-surface target track, Huscarl,’ she said. ‘Approaching rapidly. Trajectory predicts zone mortalis Gamma.’
Diamantis activated his datacast.
‘This is Trickster, this is Trickster,’ he said. ‘Alert kill team Naysmith. Incoming target echo confirmed. Expected, vicinal Mortalis Gamma. Deploy!’
* * *
The Mantolith juddered hard as it ate its way out of the flaw’s shale and met unyielding bedrock.
‘Lord, we can go no further,’ one of the drivers protested.
‘Full stop!’ Abaddon ordered.
The drivers threw levers, and the drills died with a whine. The massive vehicle, inclined at a thirty degree angle, shuddered to a halt.
Abaddon’s spearhead unstrapped and rose, braced upright on the sloping deck. The magi in the rear section were bringing the internal systems to power. A deep hum began to build.
‘Set homer beacons,’ Abaddon ordered, his voice a crackle through his visor speakers.
Each Terminator voice-activated the unit under his chestplate.
‘Weapons up, weapons set,’ he said. There was an answering clatter of metal.
‘I’ll say this once,’ Abaddon growled. ‘Let us illuminate. Lupercal!’ ‘Lupercal!’ the men answered.
Abaddon turned his head, and looked at the lead magos in the rear of the craft. He waited. The Mechanicum adept nodded.
‘Brace for teleport,’ said Abaddon.
THREE
* * *
The zones mortalis
The Termite carrier erupted into the open air. It breached the underground chamber at the intersection of the floor and the west wall, rupturing flagstones and strewing bricks and ashlar blocks as the wall face split around its bulk. Its huge whirring drill and bore-heads, caked with taupe shale from the slurry of the flaw, slowly droned to a halt.
There was a moment’s quiet. Nothing stirred, except the retarding whirr of the deactivated drilling gear and the slither of settling stones and brick fragments. Dust drifted in the gloomy air.
The armoured hatches of the half-buried craft slammed open. Dark figures deployed with fast, rehearsed grace. Cthonae Reaver Squad, Sons of Horus, the tactical elite of 18th Company. Tybalt Marr led them, flanked by his assault captain, Xan Ekosa. They spread out, weapons raised, stalking across the chamber.
Marr, a veteran company captain, one of the Lupercal’s very best, had been proving his combat ability since the Great Crusade, since the time of the Legion’s old name. He was proud to stand among
the Warmaster’s finest sons. He scanned the scene, using his visor display to compare an auspex review of the location against old, archive maps of the Palace that First Captain Abaddon had supplied.
‘Basement vault, Canasaw House, Saturnine District,’ he voxed.
‘Verified,’ Ekosa voxed back, making his own visor-read. ‘Plan is not a precise match to stored schematic, my captain.’
‘Stored schematics are old, Ekosa.’
‘Look there,’ said Ekosa. ‘It’s been extended. Built out. The archway widened and banked out.’
‘Dorn has spent years fortifying-‘
‘That brickwork is new,’ said Ekosa. ‘He fortified every basement?’
‘He’s nothing if not thorough,’ replied Marr. He raised his left fist, and made two quick gestures. Cthonae fanned forward.
Assault formation. Achieve the surface. Secure. Connect with other units as they emerge. The First Captain’s orders had been clear. Maybe they were the first up? It didn’t matter. There was honour in being first in, and honour in this action. No time to pause. A spearhead stayed in motion. That was the enshrined doctrine, and Marr had used it enough times to know that it worked.
They had the razor edge of secrecy on their side.
But Ekosa was right. That brickwork was fresh. There was something off about this place…
‘Locate surface,’ he voxed. ‘Fast progress to street access. Secure location.’
‘Lupercal!’ Ekosa snapped back.
The squad moved again, weapons up.
The first bolter shell hit Xan Ekosa square in the faceplate, and annihilated his head. His body was still on its way down when the full barrage began. Bolter and las-fire, bracketing them from three different directions, howled out of the darkness.
Tybalt Marr started to shoot, bracing against his boltgun as it shook, full-auto. He didn’t know what he was firing at. Men either side of him were shooting too, yelling. The chamber flickered with fast-strobing muzzle flash. Bodies crashed over, ripped apart from multiple angles. Blood sprayed the walls and floor. Gouts of it splashed the vaulted ceiling. Shards of fractured armour scattered and bounced like strewn coins.
Cthonae Reaver Squad, pride of the 18th, was rendered extinct in slightly less than fourteen seconds.
Silence.
Smoke billowed in the chamber’s cold air. It wreathed across the heaped and twisted bodies. Blood gurgled and dripped from exploded black plate.
The kill team emerged from the shadows, guns low and ready. They walked forward.
‘Headshots to every one,’ ordered Loken. ‘No exceptions. I don’t care if they look dead. Baldwin? Clean out that tunneller with a flamer, then blow its motivators.’
‘Yes, captain.’
Loken walked among the dead. Cthonae, the 18th. So this is where that proud legacy ends. Behind him, single shots began to ring out as his men picked through the corpses, pressing bolt pistols to each helmet in turn.
He found Marr. He was on his back. Gunfire had blown out his right hip, and severed his right arm at the elbow. A bolt-round had hit his neck and torn his helmet off. It had taken a substantial portion of his head with it. His last breaths bubbled through blood. He gazed up, stupefied, with his one remaining eye.
He saw a Luna Wolf standing over him. A death dream, surely, a flash of the past flitting across his vision as he fell away. The last thing he would see. The thing he wanted to see.
‘Garviel…?’ he wheezed, bloody foam clotting his mangled lips.
Loken crouched down.
‘To the death, Tybalt,’ he said. He put his bolter in Marr’s mouth, and pulled the trigger.
* * *
‘Naysmith reports force annihilation, zone mortalis Gamma,’ said Elg calmly. ‘Kills confirmed. Vehicle disabled. No losses’
Diamantis picked up the vox-mic. ‘Naysmith, this is Trickster,’ he said. ‘Declare contact.’
‘Sixteenth,’ the vox hissed back. ‘Cthonae Reaver and the company captain.’
‘Acknowledged, Naysmith. Stand by.’
Sindermann watched the Huscarl. Diamantis was impassive. The XVI. The Praetorian had been right. The Sons of Horus themselves.
‘Tracking?’ Diamantis said.
‘Stand by…’ Elg replied, then very rapidly added, ‘Con
firmed sub-surface track, approaching rapidly. Trajectory predicts zone mortalis Delta. Two additional confirmed sub-surface tracks. Trajectory predicts zone mortalis Alpha. Additional track, predict mortalis Beta. All running.’
Before she had finished speaking, Diamantis had activated his link and begun speaking over her.
‘This is Trickster, this is Trickster, alert kill team Black Dog. Incoming target echo, expected, vicinal Mortalis Delta. Deploy! Alert kill team Strife. Incoming, two targets, expected, vicinal Mortalis Alpha. Deploy! Alert kill team Seventh. Incoming target, expected, vicinal Mortalis Beta. Deploy!’
It was all so frighteningly calm. Fascinated, Sindermann watched the post’s war board. The moment she had acquired the first target, Elg had punched up a hololith display of the entire Saturnine operation. He’d been astonished at the scale of it. The chart showed, as a milky ghost, the ragged spur of the flaw, the only drill-navigable part of the subcrust. It ran like a jerk of lightning across the screen, a pale river locked in impervious bedrock. Over that ran a schematic of the basement levels, almost three kilometres of interlocking, built-out and conjoined cellars, linked by tunnels and clearance channels. A considerable area of Saturnine District had been seized, and the basements opened and connected to cover every part of the flaw that rose to within breaching distance of the surface. All the chambers directly over the flaw had been marked as zones mortalis, and ciphered Alpha through Sigma. These were the killing floors, blocked out, reinforced, and girt with inward-facing glacis, redans and other retrenchments. Adjoining those, but not overlapping the flaw itself, were the deployment halls, one through seven, the munition stores, the support chambers, an infirmary, the command post, and Land’s manufactory lab. Beyond these were sealable causeways, and secondary chambers for fall-back. On top of the schematic plans lay another graphic overlay, showing the intricate system of ducts and pipes that connected Land’s lab to various locations along the fault.
It seemed so simple, so ruthlessly logical. The only places where infiltrators could emerge were directly inside the zones mortalis, where kill teams would be waiting for them.
I suppose, thought Sindermann, it all depends on how many units try to get in.
And who they are.
‘Confirmed sub-surface track,’ Elg called out. ‘Trajectory predicts zone mortalis Theta. Additional, confirmed sub-surface track. Trajectory predicts zone mortalis Rho. All running.’
Diamantis was already relaying.
‘This is Trickster, this is Trickster, alert kill team Brightest. Incoming target echo, expected, vicinal Mortalis Theta. Deploy! Alert kill team Naysmith. Incoming target, expected, vicinal Mortalis Rho. Deploy!’
* * *
The power hum rose, and then fell away again, querulously.
‘Try it again!’ Abaddon snapped.
‘Lord First Captain, that will overload the grid,’ the lead magos began to explain.
‘Again!’ Abaddon demanded.
‘We are right up against the bedrock, lord,’ replied the magos, ‘because you drove us so deep. The mineral density of the lithified structure is denying us a secure teleport lock. We have attempted transfer six times. Without due cooling time, or an immediate repositioning of this vehicle, another attempt will burn the grid out.’
Abaddon took a step towards the Mechanicum elder.
‘Don’t make him come to you,’ Gauk warned. ‘Do it again.’
* * *
The trained guns of kill team Strife greeted Arnok Assault of the 25th in Mortalis Alpha, and cut them to ribbons. The slaughtered Space Marines had no cover. Their bodies slammed back against the hull of their Terrax-pattern Termite, blown open and ruined.
‘Consolidate!’ Nathaniel Garro told his subordinate, Gercault, as he reloaded his bolt pistol. Trickster said two.’
The Imperial Fist nodded. He sent a squad to sanction-check Strife’s first set of kills, and they fanned out under the low vault of Mortalis Alpha.
‘This is Strife! Garro voxed. ‘Alpha clear. Target one extinct.’
‘Acknowledged, Strife. Second target expected, vicinal, immediate.’
‘Understood, Trickster.’
Garro crouched. He put his left hand down, palm flat, on the flagstones Behind him, several confirmation shots boomed out.
‘Quiet!’ Garro called.
He shifted his palm. A vibration, very faint. A tremble.
Garro raised his hand, and pointed.
‘West quarter,’ he said.
‘Move,’ ordered Gercault, repositioning the fire-teams. They could hear the approaching rumble now. Men braced, bringing up their weapons to ready.
The second Termite, the big Plutona-pattern, ploughed up through the floor in the very corner of the chamber. Its spinning drill heads flung out scraps of crushed flagstone. Dust spewed out.
It had overshot. The tunnelling head gnawed into the wall, spraying brick, and within seconds, the huge machine had dragged half of itself through into Mortalis Eta.
Gercault’s sections hammered the stern hatches as soon as they opened into Alpha, mowing down the Sons of Horus as they emerged. Bodies dropped. Some legionaries fell back inside the machine, trying to use the hull as cover so they could return shots. The first enemy shots of the action were fired.
Garro was already running, two squads at his back. As Gercault prosecuted the rear hatches, Garro crossed under the connecting arch to tackle the forward hatches in Eta.
Black-clad legionaries were jumping clear, the machine’s drill heads still spinning. Thedra Destroyer Squads, of the 18th. They ripped out bursts of gunfire at Garro as his men appeared. The Imperial Fist beside him sprawled, gutshot. Garro dropped behind one of the rockcrete firing walls Dorn had erected, and returned fire. He hit one of Thedra. The impact of the rounds from Garro’s Paragon gun hurled the ruptured body back into the drill heads, which vaporised it in a crunching blitz of red fog.
‘Heavy!’ Garro yelled. He had men shooting from the firing wall, and enemy fire exploding against the wall face and off the ceiling.
His Murder section arrived, lugging the support weapons. Mathane opened up with his lascannon across the low wall, tearing las-bolts the size of machetes at Thedra. Orontis emptied the saddle mags of his arm-slung autocannon, riddling the kill-site with high-rate fire and punching hundreds of holes in the Plutona’s hull.
In Alpha, Gercault’s squads had scoured the rear section, and tossed fragmentation bombs into the back hatches. The contained blast drove flame and grit out of the fore-hatches in Eta, staggering the last of Thedra’s Destroyers forward. Orontis cut them down, dead casings spewing out of his cannon’s ejector like sea-spray.
He ceased fire, and tilted the rotary barrels up. Smoke boiled from the muzzle, and the cyclic motor purred to a standstill.
‘Consolidate!’ Garro ordered.
* * *
In Mortalis Delta, Endryd Haar stopped punching the Sons of Horus legionary with his power fist, paused, then decided on one more for luck. The traitor had died several punches ago, so it was more about venting grievance.
Haar tossed the mangled body aside. It hit the stone floor like a sac k of broken glass.
‘Well?’ he rumbled.
‘Kills confirmed,’ the Blackshield’s squad chief told him. They had met a Plutona coming in, and opened fire before it had even begun to unhatch, cracking it open like a meal-can to scoop out the contents.
‘Black Dog to Trickster,’ Haar said. ‘This one’s done. Delta is cleared. Where now?’
‘Stand by, Black Dog. Deploy to Mortalis Epsilon. Incoming target echoes, expected, vicinal.’
‘Understood,’ he replied. ‘Move, lucky brothers!’ Haar said, turning his massive bulk to face his squad. ‘More welcoming to do.’
* * *
The Mantolith had come to a dead halt.
‘On your feet,’ ordered Falkus Kibre. His men unlocked and rose. In the rear section, the tech-magi w
ere achieving grid power. The vehicle throbbed with the hum.
‘Set homer beacons,’ Kibre ordered. Each Terminator voice-activated his unit. Kibre, the Widowmaker, had the honour of commanding the Justaerin Elite sections, a role he had conducted since the years of crusade. But for this undertaking, First Captain Abaddon had claimed that right, and Kibre, a brother of the Mournival, and Abaddon’s loyal subordinate, had given them up without a murmur. Kibre had taken the notorious Catalan Reaver squads instead. The Catalan were just as exemplary and just as efficient, though Kibre, a Justaerin man, was loath to confess that out loud. The two elite sections vied for supremacy and battle honours. That was why there were two elites in the First Company: competition bred performance. Another of Abaddon’s simple but brilliant war doctrines. One elite smacks of hubris, and risks resting on its laurels, he had said. Two elites provoke each other and strive for ever finer glory. Like rival brothers. Like Dorn and Perturabo.
‘Weapons up, weapons set,’ Kibre ordered. DeRall, the Catalan’s vicious chief, relayed the order fiercely.
The Emperor must die, Catalan,’ Kibre announced. ‘Let us be bringers of despair. Lupercal!’
‘Lupercal!’ the men answered.
Kibre nodded to the lead magos in the rear of the craft.
‘Brace for teleport,’ he said.
The compartment filled with light.
* * *
‘Confirmed sub-surface tracks, approaching rapidly,’ said Elg, matter of fact. Three, repeat, three tracks, inbound. Awaiting trajectory plots.’
Diamantis waited, his face grim.
‘Come on…’ he murmured.
‘Naysmith reports force annihilation, zone mortalis Rho,’ said Elg, watching the data-feed. ‘Forty kills confirmed. Vehicle disabled. No losses. Seventh reports force annihilation, zone mortalis Beta. Twenty-five kills confirmed. Vehicle disabled. Gallor reports two casualties, minor. Brightest deployed, Theta, still awaiting contact.’
‘Mistress!’
She looked at the operator beside her. He was staring at his plate, trying to parse a fresh block of readings.
