Galaxy in Flames

by Ben Counter

  'Jonah?' said Cassar. You would betray me? After all we have seen?'

  There's only one thing I want, Titus, and that's command of my own Titan. One day I want to be Princeps Aruken and that's not going to happen if I let you do this,’

  Cassar said, To know that this whole galaxy is starved of belief and to think that you might be the only one who believes… and yet to still believe in spite of all that. That is faith, Aruken. I wish that you could understand that,’

  'It's too late for that, Titus,’ said Aruken. 'I'm sorry,’

  Aruken's gun barked three times, filling the bridge with bursts of light and noise.

  * 6B Р¤

  Tarvitz could see the battle from the shadow of an entrance arch leading into the Precentor's Palace. He had escaped the cyclone of carnage that Angron had slaughtered into life, to link up with his own warriors in the palace, but the sight of the World Eater's primarch was still a vivid red horror in his

  mind.

  Tarvitz glanced back into the palace, its vaulted hallways strewn with the bodies of the dead palace guard darkening as late afternoon turned the shadВ­ows long and dim. Soon it would be night.

  'Lucius,' voxed Tarvitz, static howling. 'Lucius, come in.' 'Saul, what do you see?'

  'Gunships and drop-pods too, our colours, landВ­ing just north of here.' 'Has the primarch blessed us with his presence?' 'Looks like Eidolon,’ said Tarvitz with relish. The vox was heavy with static and he knew that the War-master's forces would be attempting to jam their vox-channels without blocking their own.

  'Listen, Lucius, Angron is going to break through here. The loyal World Eaters down there won't be able to hold him. He's going to head for the palace,’

  'Then there will be a battle,’ deadpanned Lucius. 'I hope Angron makes it a good fight. I think I might have found a decent fencing opponent at

  last,’

  'You're welcome to him. We need to make this stand count. Start barricading the central dome.

  We'll move to fortifying the main domes and juncВ­tions if Angron gives us that long,’

  'Since when did you become the leader here?' asked Lucius petulantly. 'I was the one who killed Vardus Praal,’

  Tarvitz felt his anger rise at his friend's childishВ­ness at such a volatile time, but bit back his anger to say, 'Get in there and help man the barricades. We don't have long before we'll be in the thick of it,’

  The Thunderhawk sped away from the Vengeful Spirit, gathering speed as Qruze kicked in the afterВ­burners. Mersadie felt unutterably light-headed to be off the Warmaster's ship at last, but the cold realВ­isation that they had nowhere to go sobered her as she saw glinting specks of the fleet all around them.

  'Now what?' asked Qruze. We're away, but where to next?'

  'I told you we were not without friends, did I not, Iacton?' said Euphrati, sitting in the co-pilot's chair beside the Astartes warrior.

  The warrior gave her a brief sideways look. 'Be that as it may, remembrancer. Friends do us little good if we die out here,’

  'But what a death it would be,’ said Keeler, with the trace of a ghostly smile.

  Sindermann shared a worried glance with her, no doubt wondering if they had overreached themВ­selves in trusting that Euphrati could deliver them to safety out in the dark of space. The old man looked tiny and feeble and she took his hand in hers.

  Through the viewshield, Mersadie could see a field of glittering lights: starships belonging to the Sixty-Third Expedition, and every one of them hosВ­tile.

  As if to contradict her, Euphrati pointed upwards through the viewshield towards the belly of an ugly vessel they would pass beneath if they continued on their current course. The weak sun of Isstvan glinted from its unpainted gunmetal hull.

  'Head towards that one,’ commanded Euphrati and Mersadie was surprised to see Qruze turn the controls without a word of protest.

  Mersadie didn't know a great deal about spaceВ­craft but she knew that the cruiser would be bristling with turrets that could pick off the Thun-derhawk as it shot past, and could maybe even deploy fighters.

  РЈ Плу are we getting closer?' she asked hurriedly. 'Surely we want to head away?'

  Trust me, Sadie,’ said Euphrati. This is the way it

  has to be,’

  At least it will be quick, she thought, as the vessel grew larger in the viewshield.

  'It's Death Guard,’ said Qruze,

  Mersadie bit her lip and glanced at Sindermann.

  The old man looked calm and said, 'Quite the adventure, eh?'

  Mersadie smiled in spite of herself.

  What are we going to do, Kyril?' asked Mersadie, tears springing from her eyes. 'What do we have left to us?'

  'This is still our fight, Mersadie,’ said Euphrati, turning from the viewshield. 'Sometimes that fight must be open warfare, sometimes it must be fought with words and ideas. We all have our parts to play,’

  Mersadie let out a breath, unable and unwilling to believe that there were allies in the cruiser loomВ­ing in front of them. 'We are not alone,’ smiled Euphrati. 'But this fight… it feels a lot bigger than me,’ You are wrong. Each of us has as much right to have their say in the fate of the galaxy as the War-master. Believing that is how we will defeat him,’

  Mersadie nodded and watched the cruiser above them drawing ever nearer, its long, dark shape edged in starlight and its engines wreathed in clouds of crystalline gasses.

  Thunderhawk gunship, identify yourself,’ said a gruff, gravel-laden voice crackling from the vox-caster.

  'Be truthful,’ warned Euphrati. 'All depends on it,’

  Qruze nodded and said, 'My name is Iacton Qruze, formerly of the Sons of Horus,’

  'Formerly?' came the reply.

  Yes, formerly,’ said Qruze.

  'Explain yourself,’

  'I am no longer part of the Legion,’ said Qruze, and Mersadie could hear the pain it caused him to give voice to these words. 'I can no longer be party to what the Warmaster is doing,’

  After a long pause, the voice returned. 'Then you are welcome on my ship, Iacton Qruze.' 'And who are you?' asked Qruze. 'I am Captain Nathaniel Garro of the Eisenstein.'

  PART THREE

  BROTHERS

  FOURTEEN

  Until it's over

  Charmoisan

  Betrayal

  'I've lost count of the days,’ said Loken, crouching by one of the makeshift battlements that looked over the smouldering ruins of the Choral City.

  'I don't think Isstvan III has days and nights any more,’ replied Saul Tarvitz.

  Loken looked into the steel grey sky, a mantle of cloud kicked up by the catastrophic climate change forced on Isstvan III by the sudden extinction of almost all life on its surface. A thin drizzle of ash rained, the remains of the firestorm swept up by dry, dead winds a continent away.

  'They're massing for another attack,’ said Tarvitz, indicating the tangle of twisted, ash-wreathed rubВ­ble that had once been a vast mass of tenement blocks to the east of the palace.

  Loken followed his gaze. He could just glimpse a flash of dirty white armour.

  World Eaters,’

  Who else?'

  'I don't know if Angron even knows another way to fight,’

  Tarvitz shrugged. 'He probably does. He just likes his way better,’

  Tarvitz and Loken had first met on Murder, where the Sons of Horns had fought alongside the Emperor's Children against hideous megarachnid aliens. Tarvitz had been a fine warrior, devoid of the grandstanding of his Legion that had so antagoВ­nised Torgaddon.

  Loken barely remembered the journey back through the Sirenhold, scrambling through shattered tombs and burning ruins. He remembered fighting through men he had once called brother towards the great gates of the Sirenhold, and he had not stopped until he had his first proper sight of the P
recentor's Palace and its magnificent rose-granite petals.

  'They'll hit within the hour,’ said Tarvitz. Til move men over to the defences,’

  'It could be a feint,’ said Loken, vividly rememВ­bering the first days of the battle for the palace. 'Angron hits one side, Eidolon counter-attacks,’

  His first sight of Tarvitz's warriors in battle had resembled a great game with the Emperor's ChilВ­dren as pieces masterfully arranged in feints and counter-charges. A lesser man than Saul Tarvitz would have allowed his force to be picked apart by

  them, but the captain of the Emperor's Children had somehow managed to weather three days of non-stop attacks.

  "We'll be ready for it,’ said Tarvitz, looking down into the depths of the palace.

  Loken and Tarvitz had climbed into the structure of a partially collapsed dome, one of the many secВ­tions of the Precentor's Palace that had been ruined during the firestorm and fighting.

  Sheared sections of granite petals formed the cover behind which Loken and Tarvitz were shelterВ­ing, while in the rubble-choked dome below, hundreds of the survivors were manning the defences. Luna Wolves and Emperor's Children manned barricades made of priceless sculptures and other artworks that had filled the chambers beneath the dome.

  Now these monumental sculptures of past rulers lay on their sides with Astartes crouched behind them.

  'How much longer do you think we can hold?' asked Loken.

  'We'll stay until it's over,’ said Tarvitz. 'You said so yourself, every second we survive, the chance grows that the Emperor hears of this and sends the other Legions to bring Horus to justice,’

  'If Garro makes it,’ said Loken. 'He could be dead already, or lost in the warp,’

  'Perhaps, but I have to hope that Nathaniel made it out,’ said Tarvitz. 'Our job is to hold them off for as long as we can,’

  That's what worries me. This probably all started when Angron slipped the leash, but the Warmaster could have just pulled his Legions out and bombed this city into dust. He would have lost some of them, but even so… this planet should have been dead a long time ago,’

  Tarvitz smiled. 'Four primarchs, Garviel. That's your answer. Four warriors not given to backing down. Who would be the first to leave? Angron? Mortarion? If Eidolon's leading the Emperor's ChilВ­dren then he's got a lot to prove alongside the primarchs, and I have never known Horus show weakness, not when his brother primarchs might

  see it,’

  'No,' agreed Loken. 'The Warmaster does not back down from a battle once he's committed,’

  Then they'll have to kill us all,’ said Tarvitz.

  'Yes, they will,’ said Loken grimly.

  The vox-beads in both their helmets chimed and Torgaddon's voice sounded.

  'Garvi, Saul!' said Torgaddon. 'I've got reports that the World Eaters are massing. We can hear them chanting, so they'll be coming soon. I've reinВ­forced the eastern barricades, but we need every man down here,’

  'I'll pull my men back from the gallery dome,’ voxed Tarvitz. 'I'll send Garviel to join you,’

  'Where are you going?' asked Loken.

  'I'm going to make sure the west and north are still covered and to get some guns on the chapel too,’ said Tarvitz, pointing through the ruins of

  the dome to the strange organic shape of the Warsingers' Chapel adjoining the palace comВ­plex.

  The survivors had instinctively avoided the chapel and few of them had even seen inside it. Its very walls were redolent of the corruption that had conВ­sumed the soul of the Choral City.

  'I'll take the chapel and Lucius can take the ground level,’ continued Tarvitz, turning back to Loken. 'I swear that sometimes I think Lucius is actually enjoying this,’

  'A little too much, if you ask me,’ replied Loken. 'You need to keep an eye on him,’

  A familiar dull explosion sounded and a tower of rubble and smoke burst from the Choral City's torВ­tured cityscape to the north of the palace.

  Amazing,’ said Tarvitz, 'that there are any Death Guard left alive over there,’

  'Death Guard are tough to kill,’ replied Loken, heading for the makeshift ladder that led down to the remains of the gallery dome.

  Despite his words, he knew that it really was amazing. Mortarion, never one to do things with finesse, had simply landed one of his fleet's largest orbital landers on the edge of the western trenches and saturated the defences with turret fire while his Death Guard deployed.

  That had been the last anyone had heard of the Death Guard in the Choral City.

  Though from the haphazardly aimed artillery shells that landed daily in the traitors' camps, it was

  clear that some loyal Death Guard still resisted Mortarion's efforts to exterminate them.

  'I only hope we live as long,' said Tarvitz. We're running low on supplies and ammunition. Soon we'll start running low on Astartes,’

  'As long as one is alive, captain, we'll fight,' promised Loken. 'Horus picked some unfortunate enemies in you and me. We'll make him regret ever taking us on.'

  'Then we'll speak again after Angron's been sent scurrying,’ said Tarvitz.

  'Until then.'

  Loken dropped down into the dome, leaving Tarvitz alone for a moment to look across the blasted city. How long had it been since he had been surrounded by anything other than the nightВ­marish place the Choral City had become? Two months? Three?

  Ashen skies and smouldering ruins surrounded the palace for as far as the eye could see in all direcВ­tions, the city resembling the kind of hell the Isstvanians themselves might once have believed in.

  Tarvitz shook the thought from his mind.

  'There are no hells, no gods, no eternal rewards or punishments,’ he told himself.

  Lucius could hear the killing. He could read die sound of it as though it were written down before him like sheet music. He knew the difference between the war-cries of a World Eater and those of

  a Son of Horus, and the variance between the tonal quality of a volley of bolter fire launched to support an attack or to defend an obstacle.

  The chapel Saul had tasked him widi defending was a strange place to be the site of the Great CruВ­sade's last stand. Not so long ago it had been the nerve centre of an enemy regime, but now its makeshift defences were the only thing holding off the far superior traitor forces.

  'Sounds like a nasty one,’ said Brother Solathen of Squad Nasicae, hunched down by the sill of the chapel window. 'They might break through,’

  'Our friend Loken can handle fhem,’ sneered Lucius. Angron wants to get some more kills. That's all he wants. Listen? Can you hear that?'

  Solathen cocked his head as he listened. Astartes hearing, like most of their senses, was finely honed, but Solathen didn't seem to recognise Lucius's point. 'Hear what, captain?'

  'Chainaxes. But they're not cutting into ceramite or other chainblades; they're cutting into stone and steel. The World Eaters can't get to grips with the Sons of Horus over there, so they're trying to hack through the barricades,’

  Solathen nodded and said, 'Captain Tarvitz knows what he's doing. The World Eaters only know one way to fight. We can use that to our advantage,’

  Lucius frowned at Solathen's praise of Saul Tarvitz, aggrieved mat his own contributions to the defences appeared to have been overlooked. Hadn't

  he killed Vardus Praal? Hadn't he managed to get his men to safety when the vims bombs and the firestorm had hit?

  He turned his bitter expression away and stared through the chapel window across the plaza still stained dark with charred ruins. Amazingly the chapel window was still intact, although its panes had been distorted by the heat of the firestorm, bulging and discoloured with vein-like streaks that reminded Lucius of an enormous insectoid eye.

  The chapel itself was more bizarre inside than out, constructed from curved blocks of green stone in l
ooming biological shapes that looked as though a cloud of noxious-looking fumes had suddenly petrified as it billowed upwards. The altar was a great spreading membrane of paler purple stone, like a complex internal organ opened up and pinned for study against the far wall.

  The World Eaters aren't the ones you should be worried about, brother,’ continued Lucius idly. 'It's us.' 'Us, captain?'

  'The Emperor's Children,’ said Lucius. 'You know how our Legion fights. They're the dangerous ones

  out there,’

  Most of the surviving loyalist Emperor's Children were holding the chapel. Tarvitz had taken a force to cover the nearest gate, but several squads were arrayed among the odd organ-like protrusions on the floor below. Squad Nasicae had only four memВ­bers left, including Lucius himself, and they headed

  the assault element of the survivors' force alone with Squads Quemondil and Raetherin.

  Tarvitz had deployed Sergeant Kaitheron on the roof of the chapel with his support squad as well as the majority of the Emperor's Children's remaining heavy weapons. Astartes from the tactical squads were at the chapel windows or in cover further inside. The rest of Lucius's troops were stationed in cover outside the chapel, among the barricades of fallen stone slabs they had set up in the early days of the siege.

  Two thousand Space Marines, enough for an entire battle zone of the Great Crusade, were defending a single approach to the palace with the Warsingers' Chapel as the lynchpin of their line

  Movement caught Lucius's eye and he peered through the distorted window into the blackened buildings across from him. There! A glimpse of gold.

  He smiled, knowing full well how the Emperor's Children fought.

  'Contact!' he announced to the rest of his force. Third block west, second floor,’

  'On it,’ replied Sergeant Kaitheron, a no-nonsense weapons officer who treated war as a mathematical problem to be solved with angles and weight of fire. Lucius heard the squads moving on the roof, trainВ­ing weapons on the area he had indicated.

  'West front, make ready!' ordered Lucius. Several of the tactical squads hurried into firing positions along Lucius's side of the chapel.

  The tension was delicious, and Lucius felt a surge of ecstatic sensation crawling along his veins as he heard the song of death building in his blood. A raw, toe-to-toe conflict meant opportunities to exerВ­cise perfection in war, but to make it truly memorable it needed these moments of feverish anticipation when the full weight of potential death and glory surged around his body.