Now, even that was gone and the stained, featureless metal was a perfect reflection of his soul. He was a warrior without a Chapter, a killer without a code and a man who saw a great abyss before him.
A great abyss into which he wasn’t sure he hadn’t already fallen.
Looking at the shoulder guard, he wondered if, one day, there might be a symbol of which he could be proud emblazoned upon it. Was there yet hope for redemption? Or was this yet another sign that he was slowly becoming less than nothing, simply malleable clay that monstrous powers were moulding into something terrible?
‘They never speak,’ said the Newborn, breaking Vaanes’s train of thought and startling him from his gloomy reverie. ‘Why do you suppose that is?’
‘What are you talking about?’ said Vaanes. ‘Who never speaks?’
‘The loxatl. They don’t speak, at least not that I can see.’
‘They speak,’ replied Vaanes. ‘Just not the way we do.’
‘How do they speak?’
‘I’m told it’s through the patterning of their skin, but I don’t know for sure.’
‘Are they talking right now?’
Vaanes sighed. At times the Newborn’s curiosity was refreshing, at others, irritating. This was one of the latter.
‘Maybe,’ he said, seeing a grimace of pain cross the Newborn’s face. ‘Does it matter? Anyway, you should get some rest. We’ve been on active operations behind enemy lines for a long time now. We need to refresh ourselves or we’ll start to get careless.’
‘I am refreshed,’ said the Newborn, a faint light oozing between the stitching of its patchwork features. ‘The presence of the chained daemon lord nourishes me, fills my limbs with strength. I am stronger than ever.’
‘You can feel it?’ said Vaanes, interested, despite himself.
The Newborn nodded. ‘I can. The Master of the Ultramarines had his allies bind it within the warp core of the star fort. The very energies that sustain it also imprison it, and the more it struggles against its bindings, the tighter they pull.’
‘Clever.’
‘Yes,’ agreed the Newborn. ‘Marneus Calgar is a great man: strong, proud and honourable. I would very much like to meet him.’
Vaanes chuckled. ‘That’s Ventris talking,’ he said. ‘You’re admiring a man you’ve never met, a man who would kill you on sight if you ever did.’
‘Why would he kill me?’ asked the Newborn angrily, its mood changing from inquisitive to hostile in a heartbeat. ‘I bear the gene-seed of the Ultramarines.’
‘Don’t let Honsou hear you say that,’ advised Vaanes. ‘He’ll kill you himself for saying that. He’s obsessed with destroying all trace of the Ultramarines.’
‘Yes, I suppose he is. Honsou and Grendel both.’
‘I think Grendel would be happy to kill anyone, doesn’t matter if they’re Ultramarines or not. The man’s a killer, pure and simple.’
‘Like me,’ said the Newborn sadly. ‘Like you.’
‘No,’ said Vaanes, picturing a needle-like spire on a darkened world on the far side of the galaxy he had once called home. ‘Not like me at all.’
The mood in Honsou’s bunker was strained, the defeat at the breach having soured everyone’s enthusiasm for the siege. Only Cadaras Grendel seemed energised, pacing the interior of the bunker like a caged predator.
Honsou looked through the integrity field built into the bunker’s vision ports at the scarred face of the Gauntlet Bastions. Both arrowhead redoubts had suffered horrendous damage, but they were still standing and they were still in enemy hands. A great spread of rubble carpeted the ground before the V-shaped gouge torn in the left bastion.
He turned away from the dispiriting view and returned to a set of plans he’d sketched out an hour before, architectural plans of the battlefield that would have put a calculus logi to shame with their accuracy and technical detail.
Notha Etassay, resplendent in a fresh bodysuit of lacquered black and silver, glanced at the drawings with disinterest, while Grendel simply studied them for a moment before jabbing a finger down and saying, ‘What are you waiting for? Begin the barrage again!’
Etassay sighed. ‘Must we endure yet more tedium as you break your way into the other bastion?’
‘Don’t be a fool, Etassay,’ hissed Grendel. ‘We simply batter another slope through the damaged wall. Go back in the same way.’
‘How unimaginative,’ said Etassay. ‘And entirely predictable.’
‘I’ll show you predictable,’ hissed Grendel, balling his fists and reaching for his blade.
Before his knife was an inch from its scabbard, Etassay’s shimmering energy rapier was at his throat.
‘So predictable,’ said Etassay with an insouciant smile.
‘Enough, the pair of you,’ growled Honsou. ‘I’m trying to think.’
Grendel released his grip on the knife and returned to his pacing, muttering and casting hateful glances at Notha Etassay.
Honsou ignored them both, instead calculating angles of attack, time and distance factors, and defence depth to attack weight ratios. None of the figures his enhanced cognitive processes were coming up with were good enough, and he began to fear that Grendel might be right, that they would have to go back in the same way.
That didn’t sit well with Honsou, for what had failed once would likely fail again.
The attack on the left bastion cost them dearly in terms of time and effort, but little in real worth. Most of the dead were numbered amongst the chaff or alien species he’d swept up in the Skull Harvest. His Iron Warriors, two hundred grim siegemasters of Perturabo, had survived the collapse of the rubble slope, simply digging their way free. Their power armour was proof against mere rocks and rubble, which was more than could be said for the hundreds buried alive or crushed by the rockfall.
‘Can Adept Cycerin do nothing?’ asked Etassay. ‘Can he not order the weapon systems of this fort to shut down, overload the artificial gravity or use some other technical sorcery to aid us?’
‘That’s exactly what he is doing,’ said Honsou, ‘but whatever priest of the machine they have in the Indomitable’s basilica has defeated his every attack.’
‘Then would it not simply be quicker to bring a ship in close and blast the walls with its guns?’ suggested Etassay. ‘It would certainly allow me to sheath my weapon in living flesh before I die of old age.’
‘Do you really think I haven’t thought of that?’ said Honsou. ‘To make sure it didn’t flatten us along with the walls in its bombardment, a ship would need to take up a firing position virtually on top of the bastions.’
‘And?’
‘And the defences of the Basilica would blow it out of the sky,’ explained Honsou, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. ‘Torpedoes and multiple batteries would kill any ship that came in close enough for a precision strike.’
‘Maybe it would,’ said Etassay, his feral grin of pleasure widening, ‘but just think where it would land.’
Brother Olantor studied the glowing holo-schematics projected from the plotting table, trying to work out what the enemy’s next move would be. Gathered around the table, Brother Altarion, his armour still black and scarred from the battle with the mechanised scorpion, regarded the data as it flowed across the table, but it was impossible to read what he made of it all.
Interrogator Sibiya and a Saurian lieutenant consulted an encrypted data slate, while Techmarine Hestian sat within the enclosure that had recently been Brother Altarion’s command station. Dozens of wires trailed from the Techmarine’s skull, neck and forearms, trailing across the chapel’s floor to the main cogitator bank. Sweat poured down his face, the muscles and sinews at his neck clenched and taut.
Hestian fought an invisible battle within the consciousness of the machine-spirits of the star fort against a suspected adept of the Dark Mechanicus. Though Hestian did not fight with bolter and chainsword, his fight was no less deadly and no less honourable.
‘So do we have them beaten?’ asked Sibiya, finished with her lieutenant. ‘They must have lost a great many men and machines in the abortive assault on the walls.’
‘They will have suffered losses, yes, but I wouldn’t count on them being too severe,’ replied Olantor. ‘Many of the traitors will have survived. Power armour can sustain a great deal of damage, and I believe they will come at us again. Most likely at the same bastion, as it’s already breached and they can demolish the remaining portion of the wall quickly enough.’
‘Can we hold the breach?’ asked Sibiya.
Olantor shared a worried glance with Sibiya. ‘Indeed, my lord. I’ve moved up additional termite shells for the Thunderfires, and had seismic charges set into the launchers at the base of the wall. If they blast another ramp to the breach, we’ll blow it down again.’
‘Macragge?’ said Olantor. ‘My lord, this is the Indomitable. Macragge is many light years away.’
Olantor shook his head as he saw Sibiya’s confusion. Not now…
‘As you say, my lord, the fortress must hold,’ he said smoothly. ‘Now, the enemy appear to be consolidating, so while we have some breathing room I want to organise proper hunting parties for these damned infiltrators. We’re haemorrhaging men and supplies from their attacks, and it has to end now. I propose–’
‘Incoming!’ shouted Hestian, his mouth stretched in a rictus of pain. ‘Enemy vessel on approach vector.’
The display on the plotting table flickered as a haze of static washed through it and the display changed to that of the local airspace. Trajectories and orbital tracks flickered and danced, but stark amongst the information was the pulsing icon of the enemy vessel.
‘Archenemy escort… Infidel class,’ cried Hestian, his voice strained and dry. ‘Plasma signatures indicate the vessel has suffered heavy damage.’
‘Engage basilica defence routines,’ shouted Olantor. ‘Give me a tight torpedo spread, all safeties disengaged, and all close-in batteries concentrate fire on its gun batteries.’
‘What in the Emperor’s name is it doing?’ wondered Sibiya. ‘It’ll be destroyed.’
‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ said Olantor.
The first warning Sergeant Decimus had that something was wrong came when he caught a fragment of Deacon Calef’s hectoring sermon as he switched vox-networks. On Interrogator Sibiya’s orders, her preacher had remained on the walls to fill the hearts of the defenders with fire and fury. It was wasted effort, for the soldiers of Ultramar did not respond well to such fire and brimstone hectoring. Theirs was a courage bolstered by thoughts of duty, honour and brotherhood earned through years of battle, not the hysterical fervour of the more fiery Imperial preachers.
Decimus caught a gleeful reference to the fiery comet of the Emperor’s Wrath, but dismissed it as a fanciful metaphor until he saw a great many soldiers looking upwards, a flickering golden light reflected on every visor.
He turned back to the rampart, little more than a waist-high wall of rubble and broken stonework, and scanned the shattered extremities of the star fort. What had once been a monumental expanse of soaring architecture – temples, shrines and weapon arches – was now a hellish wasteland of bunkers, razorwire, defensive earthworks, redoubts and raised batteries.
A golden light in the heavens burned as it drew closer, a haze of light surrounding it.
‘Do you see it?’ said Sabatina, coming alongside him. The Chaplain’s armour was dusty and grey, the black virtually obscured by the dust of the fighting. His crozius still shone golden, and though he had not stopped fighting since the battle had begun, he seemed as fresh as though he had yet to strike a blow.
‘Aye, Chaplain,’ said Decimus. ‘Though ’tis no fiery comet of the Emperor.’
‘No,’ agreed Sabatina.
The light continued to grow until there was no mistaking its form; a starship, perhaps three hundred metres long, though it was hard to be exact, and streaming plasma and debris from its hull as it streaked towards the star fort. Aimed like a dreadful spear at the heart of the Gauntlet Bastions, its wedge-shaped prow seemed to be grinning at the prospect of killing. Slashes of light bloomed from its fore-mounted batteries, and a portion of the Via Rex collapsed as enormous shells smashed through the roof and blew apart a generator temple.
Soldiers rushed to find cover as the vessel drew ever closer, its guns firing again and blowing out the walls of a dry dock. The explosion flattened a nearby shrine temple and tore the roof from an ore silo.
Streaking torpedoes slashed overhead, trailing blue-hot contrails as they arced up towards the starship, and pounding weapon batteries unleashed streams of fire. The attacking ship shook from bow to stern as the torpedoes slammed home and exploded deep inside its belly. Spumes of brief fires and streams of glittering fuel and steel peeled away from the craft as it was hit again and again.
Another volley of torpedoes streaked overhead amid the thundering vibrations of the basilica’s guns.
‘It’s finished,’ said Sabatina, with no small measure of satisfaction. ‘How could its captain think to survive such an attack run?’
‘He didn’t,’ said Decimus. ‘And this isn’t an attack run…’
‘What do you mean?’
‘They don’t think like us, Chaplain,’ said Decimus with a sinking feeling. ‘Life holds no meaning for them.’
Sabatina looked up at the flaming wreckage as the guns of the basilica pummelled it to destruction with furious broadsides from its close-in guns.
‘Guilliman’s oath…’ hissed the Chaplain.
Decimus opened a force-wide vox channel and shouted. ‘Everyone find cover! Now!’
But against the might of a falling starship, his warning was too little, too late.
Once it had been known as the Fellclaw, and had served with honour in the Imperial Navy, but its purpose had been perverted long ago, and now it was little more than a flying bomb. Its guns had blasted a trail of destruction along the Via Rex, but they were silent now, the mutated gun crews torn from their fused positions as the Indomitable’s guns ripped the vessel to pieces.
Vast sections of the ship were blown off, but the central mass of its core remained intact, thousands of tonnes of iron falling at high speed towards the Gauntlet Bastions. The course plotted by its suicidal captain was off by a few hundred metres, but with such a weapon, accuracy was never going to be important.
The Fellclaw ploughed into the ditch before Varro’s Gate, and the section of the wall between the two bastions was utterly obliterated by the force of the impact. A vast mushroom cloud boomed skyward as the plasma core of the vessel ruptured, and a pounding shockwave roared outwards like a blazing tsunami of searing white fire.
Both bastions vanished in the seething flames of the explosion, collapsing and vitrifying in seconds. Stone and steel and flesh instantly vaporised in a roiling wave of superheated plasma as it boiled outwards from the crash site. Not a single soul escaped the destruction of the Gauntlet Bastions, neither hardened shelters or power armour protection against such awesome destruction.
The wave of devastation spread outwards, obliterating the mighty footings and buttresses of the Tower of the First and cleaving a dreadful chunk from its structure. So colossal a tower could not survive such damage to its base and a series of cracks, each one wider than a highway, ripped their way up its length. Vast chunks of stonework fell to the ground and within moments of the explosion the entire height of the tower sheared downwards in a billowing storm of falling rubble and dust. The remains of the Gauntlet Ba
stions were flattened by the avalanche of stone, and the southern edge of the Indomitable was now little more than a massive debris field.
Nor was the damage confined to the bastions alone. The shockwave toppled sacred buildings all along the length of the Via Rex, and the star fort shuddered from end to end as the aftershocks spread through the entirety of its structure.
The death toll was in the thousands, and in one fell swoop, Honsou had broken open the Indomitable. Before the last shuddering vibrations of the Fellclaw’s death had ceased, the Iron Warriors poured from fortified, void-shielded bunkers and began their final advance.
Riding in the open hatch of a Land Raider, Honsou marvelled at the destruction the crashing ship had wrought. Never one to shirk from using his assets so callously, he was amazed it had taken Notha Etassay to suggest the idea. Even Grendel had been taken aback by the blademaster’s words.
A pall of hot ash filled the air, coating everything in a patina of white. The Land Raider tore over the shattered ground, the driver expertly weaving between twisted piles of rubble and gaping craters where entire sections of wall had been wiped out. They had fought and bled over this ground, but now it was an undulating field of broken defiance, a testament to Honsou’s ruthlessness and drive to triumph.
Scores of armoured vehicles followed behind him, a riotous mix of Rhinos, Land Raiders, Votheer Tark’s surviving battle-engines and hundreds of looted flatbeds and half-tracks. Anything that could carry fighters deep into the star fort was pressed into service. Those without transport ran through the smoking ruins of the bastions, desperate to earn a measure of blood in this final battle.
The Land Raider’s tracks fought for purchase on the steep slope at the top of the remains of the bastion. They bit, and the vehicle surged forward, roaring down into the heart of the main processional way. Though spared the worst of the blast, this section of the fortress looked as though a giant had taken a wrecking ball to every structure and not stopped until it would take a hundred years to repair the damage.
Almost immediately, gunfire and heavy weapons opened up on them. Hurriedly constructed barricades and fire points had been thrown up. He shouldn’t have been surprised. The few surviving Ultramarines had reacted with customary speed and efficiency to the attack, and they were going to have to fight their way down the length of the processional to the central basilica and its mighty gun towers. The enormous structure loomed ahead of him, solid, immense and, crucially, just within reach.
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