Kabanov watched scores of the enemy fall with a dark feeling of enjoyment. “Vogor,” he voxed, “if you can hear me, get your men out of there now. We’ve opened a corridor for you, but we can’t hold it forever, man!”
Vlastan’s voice returned to him through the static. “I was just about to call you, Maksim. I knew you’d come. Late to the party, perhaps, but here all the same. Hold that corridor steady, we’re coming out!”
A heavy steel door was kicked violently open and the survivors of Vlastan’s Fourth Platoon surged out to take positions of cover alongside Kabanov’s men. Lasgun powercells were quickly shared and, together, the united Vostroyans loosed a staggering amount of fire at the howling, raging mutants.
Vlastan was the last to exit the comms tower. When he came out, he kept his head low, his laspistol high, and ran in a zigzag towards Kabanov’s position. Stubber-rounds whipped at the soaked cobbles and crates all around him.
“Warp damn and blast it all!” he spat. “Let’s get a move on, Maksim. Those bombers will be here in a heartbeat!”
Kabanov scowled, keyed the open channel on his vox-bead and said, “All squads pull out at once. Make for the breach. Don’t stop to engage. I want every last man sprinting for his life. This whole damned mountaintop will be dust and flame in about four minutes!”
Sergiev rose to send lethal las-bolts into the bodies of two closing mutants, then turned to Kabanov. “Better lead by example, sir.”
Kabanov nodded. “That goes for all of us. Let’s move!”
Four minutes. Not nearly enough time to get clear. But, if they could just make it beyond the citadel walls and into the cover of solid rock…
With a final burst of las-fire, Kabanov, Vlastan and Sergiev broke from cover and began pounding the cobbles in the direction of the breach. Enemy stubber-fire smacked into the stone walls on either side as they ran.
The surviving Firstborn followed close behind, though a number were cut down by the mutants as they tried to break from cover. Others, too, were struck in the back or legs as they raced through the wet streets.
Kabanov could hear their cries of agony and frustration, but he dared not look back. He had already detected the throaty growl of Marauder engines on their deadly approach vector.
As he, Vlastan and Sergiev turned a corner, they ran into tall, emaciated mutant who had looted a lasgun from the corpse of a fallen Firstborn.
Kabanov, running at the head of the group raised his pistol just a fraction too late. The hideous mutant, his face a gaping mess of fleshy strips and strange, bony ridges, pulled the trigger and emptied the weapon’s remaining charges at them.
Kabanov’s pistol barked a moment later, burning a deep tunnel into the brain of the disgusting freak. Strained curses from behind him made him turn.
Sergiev was down. He rolled on the wet ground in agony. One of his knees had been reduced to a cauterised stump. The severed lower leg lay where it had fallen, smoke rising in wisps from charred tissue.
“Sergiev!” gasped Kabanov as he turned and crouched by the older man. “Damn it, Vogor. Help me get him up.”
“There’s no time, Maksim,” hissed Vlastan. “He’s too badly wounded. We’ve got to get out of here.”
Kabanov replied without turning. “I said help me, you son of a bitch!”
Vlastan cocked his head and listened to the sound of the bombers closing fast. “You’re a fool, Maksim. We have to go now! Where the hell is that damned hole you made in the wall?”
Booted feet sounded on the cobbles and the surviving Firstborn charged round the corner. When they saw Kabanov crouching by Sergiev, they skidded to a halt.
“I need two fast men!” Kabanov barked.
Sergeant Zunelov reacted immediately. “Vlenin and Borsky, front and centre!”
The troopers in question quickly had Sergiev supported between them. The men resumed their sprint and, in moments, the massive, ragged gap in the citadel wall loomed before them.
The bombers were much louder now, almost deafening. Kabanov knew they must be almost directly overhead. His legs began to throb as a dull pain worked its way through the damping effects of adrenaline, but he kept on.
Seeing their prey leap over the rubble and out onto the bare mountainside, the pursuing mutants roared and screamed. Shots whizzed through the air all around the Vostroyans as they ran, slid or tumbled down the uppermost slope.
“Get to cover,” shouted Kabanov over the vox. “Get into cover right now!” The roaring of the Marauder engines was joined by the whistling of bombs as they fell in their hundreds.
“Down, all of you!”
The mountain erupted like a volcano. Fire exploded in great pillars that thrust upwards from inside the walls. Then, with the massive outward pressure of the blast-wave, the walls themselves blew out.
After long millennia on the very crest of the mountain, the ancient citadel of Megiddzar, offering protection to local people since before the Age of Strife, was utterly obliterated.
Flaming rubble rained down from the sky.
Mount Megidde (South-east Face, 961m)
Kabanov shut his eyes tight and hugged his rocky cover until long after the cascade of stones had stopped. Then, slowly, he arose, shook off the debris that covered him, and began leading his men down the mountainside. He did not look back.
As he passed Vlastan, he didn’t feel like speaking. Vlastan’s mood, however, was jubilant. “Stop and look for a moment, Maksim. Revel in our glory. We did it, man, you and I. We’ll be decorated for this. Decorated. Mark my words!”
As his friend spoke, Kabanov caught sight of Vlenin and Borsky carefully helping the one-legged Sergeant Sergiev down the difficult terrain.
Good troopers, thought Kabanov. All of them. And so many lost.
Vlastan hadn’t stopped. He stood, still crowing about honours and medals and all the worthless tin that men died for, and suddenly Kabanov had had enough.
Before he could stop himself, he’d raced over and gripped Vlastan tightly by the throat. His face twisted into a vicious snarl. “You make me khekking sick, Vogor, you know that? Don’t ever, ever compromise the lives of my men again!”
Vlastan was taken aback for only the briefest moment. Aristocratic indignation quickly took over. With a disgusted snort, he tried to knock Kabanov’s hand away, but he’d forgotten just who he was dealing with.
Kabanov moved in a blur—none who saw it could later demonstrate the technique—and before Vlastan knew what was happening, he was on his back with the wind knocked painfully from his lungs.
Kabanov stood over him, eyes aflame, poised to deliver a killing blow.
To a man, the Firstborn stopped and watched in statuesque silence.
Vlastan waited, heart racing, muscles tense, staring into his friend’s wild eyes. It was in those eyes that he saw a terrible rage being slowly, gradually mastered, and he knew the blow would never come. “Striking a fellow officer is a capital offence, Maksim,” he said softly.
“That’s not why I hesitate,” hissed Kabanov through clenched teeth. He rose, turned and continued his long march down the mountainside while the exhausted men behind him followed in heavy silence.
51 years later,
Seddisvarr Cathedral, Danik’s World
The God-Emperor towered over the congregation, dominating the cavernous interior of the cathedral, making even the largest of men feel almost microscopic by comparison.
It was a mere statue, of course, but it radiated an undeniable power over all present. The points of its stylised halo reached the frescoed dome some fifty metres above a white marble altar draped, today, in the rich red silks of a Vostroyan remembrance service.
While Bishop Zarazov, Twelfth Army’s senior ecclesiarch, droned on in his gravelly bass tone about honourable servitude and the afterlife, Vlastan gazed at the Emperor’s golden face in numb silence, waiting to be called forward onto the dais.
Hundreds of wooden pews had been removed from the cathedral hall so that e
very off-duty trooper in Seddisvarr could attend the service, whether they wished to or not. Almost two thousand men stood packed together, standing in silent respect for fallen comrades. Their breath misted in the freezing air of a space far too large to heat.
“And now,” said Bishop Zarazov, “if General Vlastan will approach the altar…”
Vlastan tore his eyes from the Emperor’s golden face and willed his mechanical chair into motion, his brainwaves translated into spidery movements by the augmetic interface at the base of his skull. As the chair jerked its way forward, each metal claw struck the marble steps with a ringing sound that echoed loudly from the grey stone walls.
Vlastan was angrily conscious of the clatter. It felt disrespectful to make such a terrible din here, and it seemed to take forever to reach the lectern at the altar’s side. In fact, it was only seconds before he faced it, his eyes on the red book that rested there.
Beside the book, which lay open, sat a gold inkpot and a single white quill. Vlastan leaned forward slowly, dipped the quill’s nib in the ink and, with all the steadiness his ravaged body could muster, began to write in the book.
As he carefully scribed each letter, he felt the eyes of all those present upon him. One pair of eyes in particular burned hotter than most.
Grigorius Sebastev, that damnable upstart captain, stood with the remains of his shattered Fifth Company, his eyes stabbing at Vlastan from the front row. The old woman, the inquisitor to which Sebastev and his men had recently been assigned, had sent one of her Astartes giants too—a man whose unnatural proportions resembled no other in the cathedral so much as the great statue of the Emperor Himself.
A special honour for you, Maksim, thought Vlastan, to have a legendary Space Marine present at your remembrance. But then, you were something of a legend yourself.
He finished inscribing the last of the letters and rested the quill in the inkpot. Then, for a quiet moment, he sat unmoving, staring at what he’d written.
Colonel Maksim Kabanov, 68th Infantry Regiment (699—767.M41), KIA.
His eyes kept returning to the first of the words.
Here it ends, Maksim, he thought. A four-star general writes a colonel’s name in the Book of Remembrance, and fifty years of soldiering are over. I wonder if you ever resented it, that I made general and you did not. You must’ve known why. Old Tyrkin laid it out so plainly, that first day.
One of Vlastan’s useless legs shuddered in a brief spasm, and he looked down at his ruined, artificially-sustained body.
I never hated you, Maksim. You saved my life twice, though our friendship was long dead that second time. I sometimes think you should have let me die. That’s weak, I know. And, besides, that was never your style. The great White Boar left no man behind, eh? Only, here I am, and you are gone, and I find no victory in that.
He turned from the book and, as the clattering legs of his chair carried him back down the altar steps, found himself inexplicably angry, though whether at himself or at his old friend, he couldn’t say. In his head, he imagined Maksim’s voice. It said:
History will not be kind to you, Vogor.
Then, it was gone.
From his pulpit, Bishop Zarazov waited until the echoes of the chair’s footfalls had faded, then lifted his hands and said, “Sanctioned hymn number two-six-six.”
The cold air filled with the mournful sound of the Cantus Militaris Deorum.
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03.1 - The Citadel Page 4
