by Guy Haley
He leapt from explosions, he sprinted past glowing lakes of cooling rock. Everything was on fire. Where it was not molten, the ground was a steaming mix of mud and blood. His feet splashed in scalding red puddles. His face burned. His hair crackled back on his scalp. Blood was in his eyes and in his nostrils and mouth. Tears streamed down his face. The few survivors of the lines were black figures, fragile in the roil of flame. They ran without in panic, all of them heading towards the soaring citadel of the Helios Gate. The gates were shut tight against the world, and the towers under ferocious attack that would see all the soldiers dead before they came anywhere near shelter, but there was nowhere else to go, so they ran away from one source of certain destruction towards another.
Behind Katsuhiro a wall of fire reached for the heavens, its glare and heat obliterating every other sight. Silhouetted in black before the inferno, Bastion 16 fired wildly when so many others of the outwork forts were gone. The call of wheezing trumpets sounded out in the wastes that even now crept closer to the feet of the defences proper, and from the blasted lands of the plain the giant shape of a siege tower burst through the flames like an axe breaking a shield.
The tower was as tall as the walls that it set itself against. Its forwards arc flashed as incoming fire was annihilated by its void shields, sending oily swirls all around its height. The front was armoured with giant bronze faces stacked atop one another, seven in number, as grotesque as any feral-worlders’ totem pole. Their screaming mouths vomited words of coherent light from cannons in place of tongues, scoring molten streaks across the walls.
The scale of the thing defied sense. It was hundreds of metres tall, its wheels immense. It should not have stayed in one piece, let alone move, but it did, flattening the land with a great dozer blade, smoke pouring from whatever engine propelled it forwards.
The incongruity of the tower struck him as wildly funny, and he laughed as he ran. To see a sight like that… In a time of reason, unreason was let loose. Impossible towers in an era of high science and rediscovery. The world had gone mad.
He cried tears of fear and tears of laughter. His throat hurt from smoke inhalation and from screaming. A shell sent up a fountain of earth in front of him, and he skidded to a stop. The tower ground forwards faster than he could run, crushing everything, its protection of energy and of metal impervious to all weaponry.
Katsuhiro sank to his knees.
‘It’s hopeless, hopeless,’ he said. ‘There is no escape.’
War trumpets blared from the construction once again, weakening his grip on sanity. His mind might have collapsed entirely, right then, and left him gibbering to perish in any one of a thousand ways, had the glare of a plasma strike not illuminated the area with more certain light, and shown Katsuhiro a familiar sight. The trenches had been pounded so hard they were hardly recognisable, and the small bunker was half buried in rock and shattered plascrete, but it still stood, and the door was ajar. A rivulet of blood rain poured inside from the wounded earth.
Nexus Zero-One-Five.
Without realising, Katsuhiro had run close to the tunnels’ entrance.
There was a way out after all.
The door was jammed open by a fan of rubble. There would be no closing it, though he dearly wished he could shut out the awful battlefield. Nevertheless, as Katsuhiro descended into the network the tumult receded a little. The inferno became a glow, the noise almost bearable, and when he got to the bottom and set out into the network, it dwindled further until, when he turned a corner into cool blackness, it faded away to a quiet, faraway roar.
He became acutely conscious of his lost hearing. Everything on the left felt muffled. His right ear functioned, but rang with tinnitus.
When he set a foot forwards and heard the soft crunch of fallen debris under his boot he was a little relieved, and he set out deeper into the network, intending to turn north and make his way nearer to the wall in safety. Darkness pressed in. The lumens were all out. The ground shook with the bombardment, sometimes violently. Debris pattered off his head. Without the immediate danger of the explosions and the enemy to keep him occupied, his fear built, and he went cautiously.
He did not find the way towards the wall. Somewhere, perhaps several somewheres, he took the wrong turn, and ended up in the corridor leading to the base of Bastion 16. Once more he smelled blood. His foot rolled on a corpse, and he nearly fell. Stumbling probably saved his life, for it prevented him from blundering into the dead man’s murderers.
Around the corner, dim red light shone, and he heard voices.
He crept forwards, not daring to breathe.
Away down the tunnel, by the base of Bastion 16, Myz and Doromek stood by a crate of explosives. Two more dead soldiers lay close to them. They were talking in urgent whispers. Despite Katsuhiro’s impaired hearing, it was quiet enough in the tunnel that he could hear what they were saying. With growing alarm he eavesdropped on their conversation.
‘It’s time,’ Myzmadra said.
Ashul’s face set.
‘Maybe we should stop a moment. Take a pause to think.’
The detonator nestled in Myzmadra’s palm. Her finger was close by the button, the nail still beautifully shaped under its covering of dirt.
‘There is nothing to think about.’
Doromek looked away. He found it hard to formulate his words when Myzmadra stared at him like that.
‘Do you ever question why we’re doing this?’ he said eventually. ‘If we’re on the right side even?’
She stared at him hard. ‘No. You do though, apparently.’ Her free hand moved smoothly to her holstered laspistol. ‘Should I worry?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I won’t stop you. But…’ He looked at his feet. ‘After Pluto,’ he began again. ‘It got harder. I don’t know what I think any more. I forgot what I believed once. It’s changed so many times.’
Myzmadra could have shot him right then, and he half expected she would. But she didn’t. Her face retained the same fixed, slightly fierce expression it usually wore. They’d escaped the sicknesses that killed so many, but they were underfed. She was frighteningly thin. The war was using them up.
‘You used to trust me.’
He shrugged. ‘I still do.’
‘Then listen to me,’ she said. ‘I have always said this was for the Emperor.’
‘You did.’
‘That this is the only course of action.’
He nodded.
‘I never told you why.’
He shrugged. ‘I did not need to know why. I believed you. I never believed Him.’
‘I was not lying. I do not think the Legion were, when they came to me, and told me that this was the only way. It all makes sense now, seeing the things we have.’
‘Myzmadra,’ said Ashul. ‘Come with me. We can get into the city. Ride this out, see which way it goes. We have no orders. No contact. We’re making this up as we go along. Destroying this bastion is an insignificant action. You’re throwing your life away for the sake of it.’
‘Every death is a triumph for us,’ she said defiantly. ‘Every act of destruction serves. This bastion is the last obstacle between the traitors and the Helios Gate. If I bring it down, they may get inside today.’
‘You can’t believe that,’ he said.
‘Does it matter if I do or if I don’t?’ She looked him in the eye. She was so proud. He admired her more than any other person he had ever met.
‘You can go now,’ she said, distantly, as if he were a servant to be dismissed. ‘There’s no need for both of us to die.’
’There’s no need for either of us to die,’ he said. ‘What’s the point of this? This is one bastion from hundreds. We’ve done our part, why keep fighting?’
‘There is no wasted action in this war. We are here because we are meant to be. This action will mean something.’
‘How do you know?’ he said.
‘I just do,’ she said, with conviction.
‘That doesn�
�t sound like you.’
‘How do you know what I sound like?’ she said. ‘We don’t know each other at all.’
He stared at her. He could have said she could go, that he would stay. He could have told her the truth, that he’d had enough, and was sick of the war and his role in it. But he didn’t. Life finds a way to make itself persist, even if it means turning a man into a coward. He had already made his choice. He wouldn’t give his life up for anyone. Not even Myzmadra.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘All right.’
She looked relieved. ‘There’s more for you to do before this is all over. But my story ends here.’
Ashul held out his hand. She clasped it.
‘Alpha to Omega,’ she said. Her smile was small but brave, and bright as polished steel in her dirty face.
‘Alpha to Omega,’ he replied.
They held hands for what seemed to be an age. Ashul had never touched her like that before. It was a simple, warm, human gesture, and he wished he had done it a long time ago. A different version of his life with her by his side flashed through his mind, the two of them against the universe. Once upon a time, he had wanted a life like that.
As if guessing what he thought, she frowned and she shook his hand free. A woman like her would never be with a man like him. She had her cause, and so did he.
‘Get out of here,’ she said coldly. ‘I’ll give you one minute, no more.’
Katsuhiro waited for the next earth-shaking detonation, and slipped away before Ashul caught him.
Daemonfall
Lord of the night
Red Angel
Daylight Wall, Helios section, 15th of Quartus
Midnight-blue gunships set down on the parapet under heavy fire. Gun positions in the city spires raked the wall tops where the enemy landed, but Skraivok chose his drop-craft carefully. All were of the increasingly rare Stormbird Sokar pattern, and void-shielded. They landed in a tight group, ramps slamming down simultaneously. Support squads poured out first into the rain, arraying themselves near the Stormbirds and targeting the nearer weapon installations with missiles and lascannon fire. The gunships angled their ball turrets up and added to the infantry’s efforts. Breacher squads came next, heading off away from the Helios Gate to block Imperial reinforcements coming up from the south. Rapier weapons platforms were dragged out from the holds. Further down the wall a heavy transport deposited a pair of Predator tanks to bolster the line. Lesser vessels flew as air support, strafing the buildings with their cannons, their missiles demolishing fortified balconies and bolted-on gunnery blisters before roaring past and coming about to make further passes.
Relieved of their cordon duty, the Raptor packs ignited their jets and bounded down the wall out from the landing zone.
The Night Lords worked quickly to secure the area. A final ship thundered down through the sky, breaching the weakened aegis in a flare of orange and sickly green. The torrent of blood raining from the sky ran off it in black falls, but it could not hide the ornate nature of the ship. Decorated with precious metals, lavishly painted, the Stormbird carried the personal heraldry of Gendor Skraivok, self-proclaimed leader of the Night Lords Legion.
The ramp opened as the ship was landing. Space Marines leapt from the exits before it had touched down. When landing claws kissed rockcrete and the ramp opened, a unit of Atramentar strode purposefully forth, slower than their power-armoured brethren but massively better protected. Lesser Night Lords took hits from the buildings of the Palace and died, but these giant warriors stood firm as las-fire flashed off their power fields without effect, and bolts and solid slugs were deflected away by their angled armour plates.
Gendor Skraivok marched out with a confident swagger, his hand gripping the hilt of his sheathed warp blade. He surveyed his troops from the top of the ramp before joining his Terminator guard. His chronometer told him it was day, but the world was deep into a war gloom as black as any Nostraman noon.
Night suited him perfectly.
‘An exemplary deployment, Captain Ashmalesh,’ Skraivok voxed. He drew his sword. The comforting power of the Neverborn flowed into his body from the naked blade, and he smiled within his helm. Why had he resisted its gifts? He saw how foolish he had been now, and it made him smile.
‘Get a shield line of breacher squads at the fore of our advance,’ he commanded. ‘We move on the Helios Gate.’
Daylight Wall, Helios Gate, 15th of Quartus
The smell of the blood pouring from the sky permeated everything. It filled Raldoron’s helmet long after he activated the void sealing on his armour. Though it was sickening by any human measure, he found it alluring, appetising even. The odour fogged his mind, encouraging him to throw off restraint and slaughter the enemy.
The world had lost all colour barring red, black and orange. Fire lit everything. The sky was so dark it was hard to believe Terra had ever enjoyed sunlight. The aegis’ displacement glows were guttering pinks and purples.
‘Captain.’ Thane’s voice penetrated the fog in Raldoron’s mind. ‘Captain!’
Raldoron shook himself out of the fugue. They were under attack from all quarters.
‘The Night Lords to the south of the gate have reinforced and are moving on our position. The siege towers are closing, two to the north of the gate, one to the south. The aegis has collapsed across the entire front of our section.’
‘Elsewhere?’
‘Hardline vox reports say the wall is under assault in the seven other places facing the siege camps,’ said Thane. ‘The shield-banes burn away our protection. The upper aegis holds for now, but we have lost many generators, and the system is under great strain, so the adepts say.’
Raldoron surveyed the wall top. It had taken the enemy minutes to sweep the rampart free of defenders, secure their landing zone, then bring in more troops. Now the Night Lords were advancing in force, before he and Thane had rallied a counter-attack. The great black snake of the shield-bane cut a darker channel across the murk. Meanwhile, the siege engines had gathered speed, and were dark shapes in the downpour, revealed by flashes of gunfire like shock images in vid-plays made to frighten.
‘We do not have enough warriors to hold the wall against this attack,’ said Raldoron.
The macro cannon on the gate tower roared, shaking him to his core.
‘Take one in every two men from sections twelve, thirteen, fourteen, seventeen and eighteen. I shall provide you with my authorisation coding.’ He blink-clicked an icon to send the data key over to Thane’s warsuit. ‘We will have to trust that the enemy will not attempt an escalade there. Inform Bhab command that those sections will be vulnerable. Request reinforcements, whatever they have. The siege towers here must not be allowed to make contact with the wall. Concentrate all fire on them. If one gets through, then our situation here will be greatly compromised. And watch the skies. If one Legion is willing to attempt a landing on the rampart, others will.’ He looked upwards through the dying aegis, half expecting to see the trails of falling drop-craft. ‘They will attack us here at section sixteen, where the aegis is weak. We can trust the sections we draw our reinforcements from will be safe, for now.’
‘As you say, Lord Raldoron. If I had command, I would do the same.’ Thane said. ‘And I tell you, I am glad I do not have command.’
‘You hold here. The Blood Angels must deal with the threat to the south. The Night Lords must be swept from the wall before the siege towers come into contact with the ramparts. Give me covering fire.’
‘We shall bring up heavy weapons to cover the wall top, both sides.’
‘Make it so. Target their heavy armour and their Terminators. Your Legion is the holder of gates,’ said Raldoron. He looked south again. The Night Lords were close enough for him to pick out their heraldry under the coursing blood. ‘Night Lords are an insignificant threat to the Blood Angels. I shall give our guests below a warm welcome they will not quickly forget.’
Calling up his veteran squads, Raldoron gathere
d his warriors within the guard chambers of the Helios Gate, then led them out from the doors onto the ramparts. They came under immediate fire from the Night Lords advancing on the gatehouse. Breacher squads went to the fore of both lines, shielding the warriors behind them. Shield walls drew closer to each other, the thick breachers dancing with bolt impacts. Heavier weapons from both sides gunned for their opponents, the exchange becoming more violent the closer they came. Impacts from the wasteland and increasingly from the void blasted chunks from the fortifications, but the Night Lords and the Blood Angels were intent on each other. Warriors fell, opening gaps in the walls of shields that were quickly filled. Though the Night Lords suffered heavier casualties from Thane’s attentions and the gunfire coming in from the Palace hives, they were greater in number.
So it was that two forces came within striking distance of one another upon the walls.
This was a contest that would be decided by blades.
The space between the two groups was a storm of explosions and microshrapnel. They were one hundred, then seventy, then fifty metres apart.
When the foe were forty metres away, Raldoron held aloft and ignited his power sword. It glittered in the bloody rain as droplets burst to atoms in the disruption field. Timing was all. They must charge first.
‘Drop shields!’ he shouted. ‘Charge!’
A hundred veteran Blood Angels roared out their battle cry.
‘For Sanguinius! For the Emperor!’
The ramparts shook to the thunder of ceramite.
A replying call of ‘Kelish!’ sounded from the Night Lords’ line. ‘Brace!’ it meant. They stopped, shields angled and planted against the parapet, pauldrons butting them. Each shield bearer was supported by the hands of the legionary behind.
Raldoron ran ahead of his warriors. Guns barked on both sides, but the Blood Angels, their shields abandoned to grant them speed, took the brunt of the damage. Several fell dead.
The lines met with a deafening crash.
Raldoron leapt, sword buzzing down. It caught the edge of a shield. Searing light dazzled him as ceramite was annihilated by the disruption field. The sword boomed and crackled, slicing across, taking the shield bearer’s arm off.
