Fulgrim

by Graham McNeill

  ‘Are all units ready and in position?’ asked Ferrus Manus without turning from the viewing screen.

  Balhaan nodded and said, ‘They are, my lord.’

  ‘Still no word from the rest of the Legions?’

  ‘None, my lord,’ said Balhaan, checking the link to the choral chambers of the Legion’s few surviving astropaths. The same ritual had been repeated every few minutes as Ferrus Manus chafed at the delay in ordering the attack, the waiting interminable for warriors who lusted to strike back at those who tarnished the honour of their brothers with their treachery.

  The hatch to the bridge slid open and a pair of the Terminator armoured Morlocks entered, followed by the gaunt figure of Astropath Cistor.

  Barely had he stepped within the bridge than Ferrus Manus was at his side, his gleaming hands taking the astropath by the shoulders in a crushing grip.

  ‘What news of the other Legions?’ demanded Ferrus, his craggy features and blazing silver eyes centimetres from Cistor’s.

  ‘My lord, I have personally received word from your brother primarchs,’ said Cistor, squirming in the primarch’s grip.

  ‘And? Tell me, are they en route? Can we commence the attack?’

  ‘Ferrus,’ said Corax, his voice soft, yet laden with quiet authority, ‘you will crush him to death before he tells you. Release him.’

  Ferrus let out a shuddering breath and stepped back from the quivering astropath as Vulkan stepped forward and said, ‘Tell us what you have heard.’

  ‘The Legions of the Word Bearers, Alpha Legion, Iron Warriors and Night Lords are mere hours behind us, my lord Vulkan,’ said Cistor calmly. ‘They will break warp close to the fifth planet.’

  ‘Yes!’ shouted Ferrus, punching the air and turning to his brother primarchs. ‘The honour of drawing first blood in this battle falls to us, my brothers. We go for full planetary assault.’

  Ferrus’s enthusiasm was infections, and Balhaan felt his blood fire with the knowledge that they were soon to take the wrath of the Emperor’s judgement to the traitors. His primarch resumed his pacing of the bridge as he threw out orders to his brothers.

  ‘The Morlocks and I will take the vanguard,’ said Ferrus. ‘Corax, your Legion is to secure the right flank of the Urgall Depression and then push into the centre. Vulkan, you have the left wing.’

  The primarchs nodded at Ferrus’s words, and Balhaan could see that even the normally stoic Corax relished the prospect of destroying the enemy below.

  ‘The other Legions will make planetfall as soon as they break warp. They will secure the dropsite and reinforce our assault,’ cried Ferrus, his eyes ablaze with magnesium fire.

  He shook his brothers’ hands and turned to address the crew of the Ferrum. ‘The traitors are not expecting us to assault so soon, and we have the advantage of surprise. The Emperor damn us if we waste it!’

  THE DELAYS ENFORCED upon Ferrus Manus had not been wasted by the Warmaster’s forces. Since their arrival at Isstvan V, eight days ago, the warriors of the World Eaters, Death Guard, Sons of Horus and Emperor’s Children had deployed throughout the defences constructed along the ridge of the Urgall Depression, making ready for the howling storm of battle that was soon to descend upon them. Behind them, long range, support squads manned the walls of the fortress, and Army artillery pieces waited to shower any attacker with high explosive death.

  The Dies Irae stood before the wall, its colossal guns primed and ready to visit destruction on the enemies of the Warmaster, Princeps Turnet personally swearing to atone for the treachery that had engulfed his command during the Battle of Isstvan III.

  Nearly thirty thousand Astartes hunkered down on the northern edge of the Urgall, their guns ready and their hearts steeled to the necessity of what must be done.

  The skies remained an unbroken canopy of slate grey clouds, and the only sound to break the ghostly howl of the wind was the scrape of metal on metal. A sense of historic solemnity hung over the black desert, as though all gathered knew that these were the last moments of quiet in what was soon to be a bloody battlefield.

  The first warning came when a dull, red orange glow built behind the clouds, bathing the Urgall in a fiery light. Then came the sound: a low roar that built from a deep, thrumming bass to a shrieking whine.

  Alarms sounded and the clouds split apart as individual streaks of light burned through and fell in a cascading torrent of fire. Thunderous explosions ripped along the edge of the Urgall, and the entire length of the Warmaster’s forces was engulfed in a searing, roaring bombardment.

  For long minutes, the forces of the Emperor pounded the Urgall from orbit, a firestorm of unimaginable ferocity hammering the surface of Isstvan V with the power of the world’s end. Eventually, the horrific bombardment ceased and the drifting echoes of its power faded, along with the acrid smoke of explosions, but the Emperor’s Children had performed perfectly in creating a network of defences from which to face their former brothers, and the forces of the Warmaster had been well protected.

  From his vantage point in the alien keep, the Warmaster smiled, and he watched the sky darken once again as thousands upon thousands of drop-pods streaked through the atmosphere towards the planet’s surface.

  He turned to the bellicose, armoured figure of Angron and the gloriously presented Fulgrim and said, ‘Mark this day well, my friends. The Emperor’s loyalists are heading to their doom!’

  THE NOISE WAS horrendous, a never-ending howl of fire that turned the interior of the drop-pod into a blisteringly hot oven. Only the ceramite plates of their armour allowed the Astartes to launch an attack in this manner, and Santor knew that their lightning assault would catch the traitors at their most vulnerable while they reeled from the power of the orbital barrage.

  Ferrus Manus sat opposite Santor, an unfamiliar sword across his lap, and the fire of their descent reflected in the silver of his eyes. Another three of the Morlocks filled the drop-pod, the greatest warriors of the Legion, and the bloody tip of the spear that would drive hard in the foe’s vitals.

  The skies above the Urgall Depression would be thick with drop-pods, the combined might of three Legions slashing through the air to exact a blood vengeance upon their erstwhile brothers, and Santor could feel the powerful desire to destroy the Warmaster’s traitors in every breath he took through the new metallic chassis of his body.

  ‘Ten seconds to impact!’ screamed the automated vox-unit.

  Santor tensed and pressed himself hard against the central core of the drop-pod, the servos of his Terminator armour locking in place in preparation for the colossal force of impact. He could hear thunderous, booming explosions from beyond the armoured petals of the drop-pod, recognising them as enemy battery fire. It seemed inconceivable that any enemy had survived the bombardment.

  The jerk of retro-burners, followed by the crushing hammer blow of the landing, tore at his grav-harness, but Santor was a veteran of such assaults, and was well used to the violence of such screaming deceleration. No sooner had the drop-pod hit than explosive bolts blew out the hatches and the scorched panels fell outwards. The grav-harness released and Santor charged out onto the surface of Isstvan V.

  His first sight was of mountainous flames as the fire of thousands of drop-pods turned the grey skies into a weave of light and smoke. Explosions marched across the ground as artillery shells smashed into the earth, and armoured bodies were pulped by the monstrous shockwaves. The ridge before him was awash with gunfire, streams of it flickering back and forth as thousands of Astartes engaged in a furious firefight.

  ‘Onwards!’ shouted Ferrus Manus, setting off towards the ridge. Santor and the Morlocks followed him into the crazed maelstrom of the battle, seeing that the bulk of the Iron Hands had impacted in the very heart of the enemy’s defences. The black desert burned in the aftermath of the bombardment, and the twisted remains of shattered bunkers, redoubts and collapsed trenches were a grisly testament to its power.

  Nearly forty thousand loyal Astartes
fought along the length of a ridge before the towering walls of an ancient fortress, the speed and ferocity of their assault catching the traitors completely off guard. Even with the filtering of his armour’s senses, the noise of battle was appalling: gunfire, explosions and screaming cries of hatred.

  The flames of war lit up the clouds above, and streaks of fire whipped across the battlefield in deadly arcs of bullets and high-energy lasers. The ground rumbled with the footfalls of an angry leviathan as the Dies Irae strode through the flurries of missiles and gunfire, its mighty weaponry blazing and gouging huge tears through the loyalist ranks. Miniature suns exploded in the desert as the Titan’s plasma weaponry blasted craters hundreds of metres in diameter, obliterating hundreds of Astartes at a stroke and turning the sand to shimmering dark glass.

  Ferrus Manus was a god of war, smashing traitors to the ground with blows from his shimmering fists or blasting them apart with an ornately crafted pistol of enormous calibre. The sword he had brought was belted at his side, and Santor wondered what it was and why he had bothered to bring it.

  A hundred traitors emerged from a ruined trench complex before them, a mix of Death Guard and Sons of Horus, and Santor slid the lightning-sheathed blades from his gauntlets. Amid the riotous confusion of the battle, Santor relished this chance for simple bloodletting. The traitors stood their ground, firing their guns from their hips as the Iron Hands smashed into them. Santor disembowelled his first opponent, and waded into the rest with a speed that would have done any warrior in Mark IV plate proud. Bolts and the roaring blades of chainswords struck him, but his armour was proof against such things.

  Ferrus Manus slaughtered enemy warriors by the dozen, their traitorous nerve failing in the face of such a majestic avatar of battle.

  The trenches and bunkers were a mass of thousands of struggling warriors, against a backdrop of explosions and the tremendous noise of slaughter. Orders, and cries of victory or despair flashed through his helmet vox, but Santor ignored them, too caught up in the cathartic release of killing to pay them any mind.

  Even amid the chaos of fighting, Santor could see that the battle for the Urgall Depression was going well. Hundreds, perhaps even thousands of traitors had been slaughtered in the opening moments of the assault. Entire Chapters of the Salamanders pressed home the shock of their attack with flame units cleansing the trenches and dugouts of enemies in stinking promethium tongues of fire. Streaks of sun-fire stabbed through the smoke-wreathed darkness, and Santor recognised the light as fire from the weapon his primarch had gifted to Vulkan.

  Sure enough, the mighty figure of Vulkan strode through the torrents of bolts, killing with every sweep of his sword and shot of the weapon his brother had forged in his name. A colossal explosion erupted at the primarch’s feet, wreathing him in killing fire, and dozens of his Firedrakes were hurled through the air, their armour molten and the flesh seared from their bones. Vulkan marched through the fire unscathed, continuing to kill traitors without missing a beat.

  Ferrus Manus pushed deeper into the ranks of the traitors. Their training had never prepared them to face the wrath of a primarch. The Morlocks followed behind their lord and master, a fighting wedge forging a bloody path through the filthy traitors with every shot and blow.

  BEHIND THE TREMENDOUS thunder strike of the assault, the heavy landers of the loyalist fleets braved the storm of anti-aircraft fire ripping upwards from inside the ancient fortress. Burning craft spiralled to the ground, ripped apart in streams of tracer fire, or blown apart by mass-reactive torpedoes. Hundreds of aircraft jostled for position as they descended to the dropsite, bringing heavy equipment, artillery, tanks and war machines to the surface of Isstvan V.

  Billowing clouds of granular dust obscured much of the landing zones as cavernous holds disgorged scores of Land Raiders and Predator battle tanks. Entire companies of armoured vehicles roared onto the surface of the planet, churning the sand beneath their tracks as they raced to join the battle on the ridge.

  Whirlwinds and Army artillery units deployed on the desert flats, spreading out and zeroing in on enemy emplacements, added their own thunder to the constant crack and rumble of battle. Even heavier craft descended on burning columns of fire, and the super heavy tanks of the Army rumbled out, the barrels of their massive guns hurling huge shells against the glassy walls of the fortress.

  What had begun as a massed strike against the traitors’ position was rapidly turning into one of the largest engagements of the entire Great Crusade. All told, over sixty thousand Astartes warriors clashed on the dusky plains of Isstvan V, and for all the wrong reasons, this battle was soon to go down in the annals of Imperial history as one of the most epic confrontations ever fought.

  The loyalist attack was bending the line of the traitors back, a curving arc of battle with Ferrus Manus at its centre. The screaming raptors of Corax’s Raven Guard cut a swathe through the enemy’s right flank, his fearsome assault wings dropping from above on the fire of jump packs, and slaughtering their foes with shrieking sweeps of curved blades. Corax darted like a dark bird of prey, leaping through the air with his winged jump pack and killing with every stroke of his mighty talons. Vulkan’s Salamanders burned the traitors’ left flank, plumes of fire marking the extent of their advance.

  But for every success, the traitors thus far had an answer. The terrifying form of the World Eaters primarch cut through hundreds of loyal Astartes as they tried to force a crossing through a killing zone of World Eater support squads. Angron bellowed like a primordial god of battle, his twin swords carving bloody rain through any who dared stand before them. As easily as the traitors died at the blades of Corax, Ferrus Manus and Vulkan, so too did the loyalists die at those of the Red Angel.

  In contrast to the brute savagery of Angron, Mortarion, the Death Lord, killed with a grim efficiency, harvesting scores of loyalist lives with every sweep of his terrifying war-scythe. His Death Guard fought with grim tenacity. Where the traitor primarchs stood, none could live, the loyalist assault breaking against them like the tide on immovable cliffs.

  Throughout the traitor lines, the Sons of Horus fought with bitter hatred in their hearts, First Captain Abaddon leading the Warmaster’s finest in battle, his wrath terrible to behold. He killed with unremitting savagery, while Horus Aximand fought beside him, his blows mechanical and forlorn as his haunted eyes took in the scale of the slaughter.

  In the centre of the traitor line, the Emperor’s Children fought with unremitting cruelty, its warriors howling with savage glee as they killed their former brothers. Unnatural horrors of mutilation and degradation were visited upon the living and the dead as Fulgrim’s Legion repulsed every attack, though their primarch was yet to be seen.

  Bizarrely clad warriors in Mark IV plate draped in stretched skin cavorted in the midst of the deadliest combats, fighting without helmets, their jaws wired open as they unleashed a hideous screaming. They bore unknown weaponry and fired echoing blasts of atonal harmonics that ripped bloody canyons in the massed ranks of the Iron Hands. Great pipes and loudspeakers fixed to their armour amplified the screaming vibrations of their killing music, and deafening sound waves tore apart warriors and armoured vehicles.

  As the bulk of the heavier equipment was landed behind the ferocious battle, more and more explosions erupted in the traitors’ lines, and even Angron and Mortarion were forced to pull back out of range of the loyalist artillery. In the centre of the battle, Ferrus Manus pushed ever onwards, his Iron Hands pushing deeper and deeper into the heart of the enemy defences as they sought to punish the traitors and unleash their wrath on the Emperor’s Children.

  Thousands were dying every minute, the slaughter terrible to behold. Blood ran in rivers down the slopes of the Urgall Depression, carving thick, sticky runnels in the dark sand. Such destruction had never yet been concentrated in such a horrifically confined space, enough martial power to conquer an entire planetary system having been unleashed in a line less than twenty kilometres wide.<
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  Entire squadrons of armoured vehicles fought to reach the front lines, but the press of armoured bodies was so thick that their commanders were frustrated in their desire to crush the traitors beneath their armoured bulk. Firing lines of Land Raiders formed and collimated lines of ruby laser fire stabbed towards the fortress and the leviathan-like form of the Dies Irae.

  Void shields flickered and, realising the danger, the monstrous Titan switched its fire from the infantry to the armour. Rippling blasts of plasma energy sawed along the line of tanks, and a dozen exploded as the white heat of fire torched their energy magazines.

  The slaughter continued unabated, on a scale never before seen, with neither side able to press home their advantages. The traitors were well dug in and had defensible positions, but the loyalists had landed virtually directly on top of them with vast numerical superiority.

  The bloodletting was a truly horrific sight as warriors who had once sworn great oaths of loyalty to one another fought their brothers with nothing but hatred in their hearts. No Legion fared well in the slaughter, the scale of the fighting rendering tactics meaningless as the two armies battered each other bloody in a remorseless conflict that threatened to destroy them all.

  JULIUS DANCED THROUGH the combat, the sights and sounds of the killing causing rushes of physical pleasure to spasm through his body as he fought with savage joy. His armour was dented and gashed in a dozen places, but the wounds he had suffered only spurred his frenetic killing dance to greater heights. In preparation for the fighting, he had repainted its every surface in a riot of colours that stimulated his freshly reborn vision.

  He had similarly enhanced his weapons, and the looks of horror and disgust that accompanied his every killing blow fired his senses.

  ‘Look upon me and realise the greyness of your lives!’ he screamed as he fought, delirious with slaughter. He had long since discarded his helmet to better experience the chaos of the battle, the roar of guns, the buzz of swords through flesh, the explosions and the vividness of shell traceries across the heavens.