Even as the cruiser perished, the planet was spewing more molten hate into the sky. Scatter-shot clouds of stone briefly became flaming meteors as they crossed the ice world’s thin atmospheric membrane, against all reason screaming upwards at the Blood Angels ships. The Victus took hits across its flank and the Hermia lost great divots of hull metal as the hurled rocks gouged valleys in the thick armour of her prow.
The Angel’s wings closed tightly over his back as the Paleknight fell away from him, vanishing into the grey haze of Holst’s churning atmosphere.
‘How many were on that ship?’ asked a tremulous voice from across the bridge; it was a junior rating who had spoken, protocol forgotten in the shock of the moment.
‘Eight full squads of legionaries.’ Sanguinius’s reply seemed to come from a very great distance. ‘Nearly a hundred times that number of crew.’ He didn’t look away from the great viewing window as he gave a new order. ‘Admiral DuCade. Action orders to all ships. Draw back from Holst, beyond the range of those attacks.’
The command was passed on, and they drew away, seething comets of magma snapping at their sterns.
The primarch’s Guard Commander bent over the flagship’s hololith, grimacing. The panes of data and imagery streaming up from the scrying arrays were outside his comprehension. ‘The mass index of Holst is altering,’ said Azkaellon, reading the impossible words aloud. ‘The planet’s dimensions are shifting. It’s shrinking. Changing.’
‘The same as Phorus,’ offered Zuriel from his side. ‘Another… sign?’
‘No.’ Sanguinius shook his head. ‘This is something else.’ He pointed. ‘See.’
Behind the Victus and the other vessels, the blue-white world was becoming a balled fist of ice and rock, wreathed in a halo of blackened ejecta of such turbulent power that the glittering ring system around Holst was breaking up.
‘What kind of weapon can fire objects of such dimension from a planetary surface?’ Azkaellon looked up, questioning anyone who would meet his gaze. ‘There’s no mass driver ever built that could do it. The power requirement alone would be immense!’
But none of the crew, human or legionary, could look away from the great viewport. Centred in the great armourglass window, Holst’s surface was partly visible through clouds of volcanic ash and chemical fog. It resembled a seething mass of colossal serpentine forms, shifting and changing. The icy landscape had become a cancerous husk in constant motion, and the writhing form played tricks on the eye, seeming to resemble faces that bellowed and spat.
When the Sanguinary Guard’s master spoke again, there was a wintry, rigid fury under every word that he uttered. ‘Our blood will not be shed by those who dare not show themselves. There will be no death without reciprocity here. On my Legion, I swear it.’
‘Contact from Captain Amit,’ reported Zuriel. ‘The Victus, Sable and Hermia are entering formation with us. Hermia reports major damage, but it is still operational.’ He hesitated. ‘Orders, my lord?’
‘This ends,’ said Sanguinius. ‘Admiral DuCade, slave gun control on all vessels present to my word of command. Tell every shipmaster to prime their cyclonic torpedoes and megaweapon-gauge systems for full bombardment. Target Holst.’
A ripple of uncertainty passed through the human crew at the thought of such mammoth overkill. ‘All weapons? Against the hive-city?’ DuCade asked.
‘Against the planet,’ corrected the primarch. ‘Synchronize aim-points along the equator, track for geological flux. I want this world shattered.’
Azkaellon felt a chill run through him. The hammer of the Emperor’s will was a powerful force, and in the wars of the Great Crusade it had often been regrettably necessary to punish whole worlds with ruthless intent. The Guard Commander had seen cities wiped off the map in the blink of an eye, vaporised by lance cannons and macronuclear bombs; continents seared by laser barrages; skies scorched.
And while the power to kill a world – to truly, utterly destroy it – had always rested within the reach of the Legiones Astartes, it was not an order that Azkaellon had ever witnessed in execution.
‘All shipmasters report guns at ready.’ DuCade read back the status in a dead voice, as if she was unwilling to believe what would come next. ‘Your will, my lord.’
Azkaellon did not feel any less of the primarch’s anger at the destruction of the Paleknight, he knew that no one aboard these sister-ships felt otherwise; but the act of war that was before them still gave him pause.
Finally, Sanguinius turned away from the great window and looked his old friend and comrade in the eye. In the Angel’s noble face there was at once a great distance that reminded Azkaellon of just how far his master was set above even his superior transhumanity. And within it, he saw a determination, dense as neutronium and equally unbreakable.
‘My patience with this shadow-play is at an end,’ said the primarch, and the words seemed to be for Azkaellon alone. ‘The order is given: exterminatus extremis.’
The void surrounding the planet Holst flashed crimson as energies were liberated and directed, as a surge of weapons of mass destruction hurtled from launch tubes and bore down upon the turbulent world.
Energy pulses struck first, moving at the speed of light and boiling away the vapours shrouding the sky, punching into the nitrogen ice surface. Rocky under-strata that had been sealed beneath permafrost for millions of years were burned clean and exposed. The torpedo barrage came seconds after, great fusion-powered rockets tipped with lethal warheads. Each had the power to lay waste to a continent, but in this instance they were combined with force enough to spear the molten heart of a world.
Whatever unreal influence had spread its cancerous instrumentality through Holst-Prime Hive spilled into the matter of the planet itself. On some primitive level, perhaps the world had even become alive, transformed by dark power into an almost-consciousness.
But it died now, perishing in revenge for the deaths of the crew of the Paleknight, for Brother Xagan and all the other legionaries. Dying for the offence its existence gave to the Angel Sanguinius.
Like a tormented animal, the planet ended with a tortured scream that even the void could not silence.
NINE
A Coward’s Weapon
The Librarius
Summoning
‘We brought a shadow back with us,’ said Meros, the words coming to him unbidden. His gaze remained firmly locked on a blank point on the plasteel bulkhead across the chamber from where he stood, his focus unwavering.
‘A shadow.’ First Captain Raldoron was at the edge of his line of sight, the crimson of his battle plate stark against the grey metal walls. The compartment on board the Red Tear was a secure holding chamber, of the kind the Legion would use if prisoner transport or confinement was required. ‘What do you mean by that?’
Raldoron was the red; to his left, in the centre, Guard Commander Azkaellon was the gold, his fine artificer armour rendered dull and flat in the bleak gloom; and High Warden Berus, hastily embarked from the Chalice, was the black at the far side. The three warriors were there to judge Meros and his words, along with those of everyone who had ventured down to the surface of Holst.
‘When the ships that killed that blighted hell returned to the fleet, there was a change.’ He glanced at Berus. ‘I know you have seen it.’
‘We ask the questions, brother.’ Azkaellon was quick to admonish the Apothecary.
Berus answered nonetheless. ‘I have seen it,’ he agreed; his rasping voice was an animal growl. ‘It is days now since we passed inside the orbit of Signus VI, and left that world killed and broken. The mood of the Legion has shifted. While the mission to Holst-Prime Hive was undertaken, word came to us of the final communication from the starship Helios…’ He trailed off, thinking. ‘Lost with all hands under strange circumstances.’
Meros gave a humourless grunt. ‘We have been beset by “strange circumstance” since the moment we arrived in the Signus Cluster, Warden.’
‘He isn’
t wrong,’ noted Raldoron.
‘Our Legion has shed more blood than this during the Crusade,’ Azkaellon retorted. ‘You speak as if we shrink from it.’
‘With all due respect, my lord,’ said Meros, ‘I said nothing of the kind.’ Outwardly, he maintained a steady countenance, but inwardly the Blood Angel was on edge. Any one of the warriors in this room had the power of an entire battle company at their fingertips; they were legendary figures with honour rolls that spanned hundreds of years of warfare – and he was no more than a legionary of the line, a lowly tactical squad medicae.
Yet he could not let himself be cowed. He risked a glance at Captain Raldoron, wondering what intentions moved behind that impassive face. Azkaellon carried himself with an air of eternal arrogance, Berus with a manner that was as watchful as a hawk, like his brother Annellus. But Raldoron… His aspect was unreadable, like the unchanging scowl of a combat helm.
The fleet was on the move, at battle speed now, crossing wide of the White River asteroid belt in a half-loop over the plane of the ecliptic, towards the inner planets and a direct speed course to Signus Prime. The command had been passed through every vessel, every company. The primarch’s patience was wearing thin, and the orders from Warmaster Horus – to oust the enemy that had taken the Signus Cluster – were still their prime motive.
But while the Legion had been marking time, sparring and preparing for open war, Meros and his brothers were held aside, isolated from the rest of their company. Only Captain Harox and his surviving battle-brother had been allowed to leave the Red Tear to return to the Dark Page, and even then under sufferance. It was said that Acolyte Kreed had not set foot off his ship since the conclave of commanders, the Word Bearers vessel moving silently alongside the flagship and offering nothing but the most terse communications. Meros wondered about the other observers at large in the fleet; no one had mentioned the whereabouts of Helik Redknife’s Space Wolves.
‘We have listened to your after-action report,’ said Berus, producing a data-slate. ‘The best that can be said is that it corresponds with those of your squad mates, in the broadest strokes.’
Meros nodded. He had done his best to keep his debrief on the Victus as succinct and to the point as possible, but the anomalous events he had lived through in Holst-Prime Hive proved difficult to render into such colourless language. Along with Kano and Sarga, Cassiel and Leyteo, Kaide and the rest – even Captain Amit and Warden Annellus – the eye-witness description of what he had encountered on the ice world was now a matter of Legion record.
Berus went on, looking at the slate’s oval screen. ‘I read this with equal dread and disbelief, Brother Meros. What you say you saw defies logic and possibility.’
‘I did not lie,’ Meros insisted. ‘And if my mind was clouded in some way, it was so subtle I never knew it.’ He looked at Azkaellon. ‘Is that what you think? You were aboard the flagship, sir. You saw the planet.’
‘From orbit,’ the Guard Captain corrected. ‘I saw no monstrous amalgams of metal and stone.’
‘But you did hear the scream.’ He said it before he was aware of it, and instantly Meros regretted his reply.
Azkaellon’s expression became stony.
‘We all heard it.’ Raldoron spoke before the Sanguinary Guard could respond.
‘Another psychological weapon,’ Berus insisted. ‘Transmitted across all vox-channels, broadcast in a resonant wave. A known tactic of the xenos.’
‘A coward’s weapon.’ Azkaellon’s lip curled, and he glared at Meros. ‘Meant to undermine the steady mind.’
If the Guard Commander was baiting him, looking for a reaction, the Apothecary refused to provide it. Finally, it was Raldoron who spoke.
‘You are dismissed, brother-medicae. Return to your unit and await further orders.’
Meros hesitated. He had questions of his own, and he wanted answers; but one look from the First Captain told him that he would not have them today.
The Apothecary gave the salute of the aquila and marched out, smothering his doubts as best he could.
The lighter settled in the Encarnadine’s number six cargo bay on thick, jointed legs that hissed under the weight of the transporter’s load. A gaggle of servitors immediately swarmed towards the craft, ready to gather up the supplies within and carry them off to the pneu-trams that would ferry the containers back and forth along the keel passages.
Even though the Blood Angels fleet was at condition one, combat ready, a handful of intraship transport movements were still taking place. The heightened alert state did not prevent one from venturing ship to ship, but it did make it harder to do so without good cause. To travel across the flotilla without a formal waiver or a marque of liberty was to court censure at least and a court martial at worst.
Kano had managed it, though. He was canny and careful, charting a course that wove back and forth over the ships of the fleet, in the span of a day making his journey from the Red Tear to the vessels in the great assembly’s spinward quadrant. He rode in tankers, Stormbirds and shuttles. He made himself as unremarkable as a gene-forged could, his armour left behind on the battle-barge, his face lost beneath a set of hooded robes. It was a busy fleet, and the adjutant of a First Captain knew how it worked.
Kano stepped down onto the Encarnadine’s echoing deck and glanced around. His arrival went unnoticed, and that was just as he wished it. To have come here under official lights would have meant answering questions, and he wasn’t ready to do that. Not just yet.
Walking with purpose, he crossed the cargo bay towards one of the wide transit elevator platforms, schooling his manner so that any who might look upon him in passing would not consider the Blood Angel out of place.
The elevator gantry was two leaves of filigreed brass, one atop another, and they slowly and gracefully peeled back to grant access to the lift. As he paused to wait, the sense of someone else behind him became clear; despite himself, the legionary allowed a small smile to form on his face.
‘Hello, Brother Kano.’ Another warrior, also out of his battle plate and robed in similar fashion, came to stand beside him and lingered. ‘It’s been a while.’
‘Not as long as it seems.’ The elevator opened to them and they boarded. The platform began a lazy ascent that would take several minutes, riding from the cargo bay at the bottom of the Encarnadine’s ventral sail to the core decks of the great cruiser. Shallow pillars of rectangular containers surrounded them, rising as tall as houses, arranged in neat two-by-two rows. The shadows the modules cast concealed them; the warriors were quite alone.
The other legionary rolled back his hood, revealing an olive-skinned face with narrow, steely eyes. A thin black beard came off his chin like lines of ink on a pen-sketch, and he seemed gaunt. Kano’s memories of the man were out of place. He recalled that face wearing the crystal-and-steel matrix of a psychic hood, not bare and shorn as it was now.
‘Brother Ecanus.’ Kano offered his hand, pulling back his own hood with the other. ‘Well met.’
‘That remains to be seen.’ Ecanus accepted the gesture, and Kano saw the conflict in him. His old friend knew that they were not meant to convene under such clandestine circumstances.
‘How did you know I would be here?’ Kano asked.
‘I had an inkling,’ said Ecanus. ‘Wasn’t sure until I saw you step out of that lighter’s airlock.’ He looked away, watching the deck levels drop past them as they rose higher and higher. ‘The Wardens won’t see us here, fate willing. You’ve come to talk.’
Kano nodded. ‘To a brother, yes.’
Before the Decree of Nikaea, Brother Ecanus had served the Blood Angels as a battle-psyker in the 202nd Company. And like Kano, he had accepted the orders that made the use of his skills taboo. Kano remembered days of sharing wars with Ecanus; he had a particular affinity for a power they knew as ‘the Lance’, the conjuring of a great spear of telekinetic force with which to strike down the Legion’s foes. To think of the warrior before him without it dimin
ished Ecanus in a way that struck Kano with a brief dart of melancholy.
‘Things are different now,’ Ecanus said, as if he sensed his thoughts. ‘Our duty asks other things of us.’ He paused. ‘Brother, as much as it pleases me to see you, there are conventions we challenge by meeting this way. In secret.’
‘No order stands that says two battle-brothers cannot share a conversation.’
‘Not formally, no.’ Ecanus’s hands came together, fingers meshing. ‘But when the Emperor spoke the edict, the Legion put distance between our kind for a reason.’
Kano couldn’t stop the scowl that pushed its way forwards. ‘Well, damn Berus or any Warden who dares challenge me. I won’t be treated like a exile-in-waiting and tarred by the foolishness of others!’
Ecanus eyed him. ‘Is that what you came out here to say to me?’
He’s as perceptive as ever, Kano thought. ‘Not that, no.’ He sighed. ‘I came to you because I must speak of something that only you would understand.’
‘This is to do with the killing of the planet Holst? Word of the primarch’s order spread quickly through the fleet.’
Kano shook his head. ‘That may be a ripple from the same fallen stone. No, brother. Before that, before we even reached the Signus Cluster.’ Now it was time to say the words aloud, Kano found it hard to form them. His throat was suddenly arid. ‘There was a dream,’ said the former Librarian. ‘A vision of potency that came to me as I meditated. I did nothing to seek it.’ Remembering it now, he felt his pulse race. ‘But powerful, brother. Strong and dark and deep.’ He took a slow breath. ‘I was falling, and there was–’
‘A red angel.’ Ecanus whispered it. ‘A blood-stained seraph, reaching out.’ He raised his hands in the exact mirror of the apparition Kano had experienced. ‘I saw it too.’
Meros sensed the grim, gallows-walk mood of the infirmary as he passed through its halls. Outside of an actual combat engagement, when the medical centre was healing the wounded and tending to the dying, it was typically quiet. It was so now, but in a different way. The air felt heavy with despair, and there were many more crewmen and Legion-serfs at large in the corridors. Those of them who dared to look up at the Blood Angel as he passed did so with open fear on their faces. In his mind’s eye, Meros saw them and remembered the frozen corpses on the streets of Holst-Prime. They seemed like two sides of the same coin: alive and dead, here and there.
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