Angels of Caliban

by Gav Thorpe

  The Intolerant opened fire.

  From the ground Redloss watched the descending bolt of darkness. It looked like a negative sun, a sphere of black that slid across reality rather than dropped with mass, slower than a shell or missile, impossibly dense yet intangible.

  We have come. We are death.

  The chant reverberated along the valley one last time before the Intolerant’s bolt struck the ground. The darkness vanished, slipping past the ice and mud and for several heartbeats nothing happened.

  The rift blast expanded in an instant, a lightning-wreathed oval of discordant energy that filled the space between the Dreadwing and the stronghold, its crackling edge no more than a hundred metres from Redloss. A screech like a god’s whetstone split the air, speakers and vox-units emitting their own piercing feedback wails in reply. A million tonnes of earth and ice sparkled in blue suspension, every grain of rock and mote of ash shimmering with tiny arcs of warp power.

  In the depths of the rift shapes moved almost unseen – the broadest sweep of a face or raking claw. They appeared more like afterimages, rendered in three dimensions against the stretched skin of reality, pressing to pass through a veil only made visible by their presence.

  Redloss held his breath, awed by the beauty of the moment, as he always was.

  An instant later the warp field collapsed like a storm bubbling down into a single drop of rain. Dirt, snow, ferrocrete, flesh, metal, ceramite, bone, all disappeared with a boom that eclipsed all other sounds of battle. Silence followed as Farith’s auto-senses shut out the reverberations from the valley walls, but he could feel the ground shaking even through the rumble of the Spartan’s engines and the grinding of its tracks.

  Where the warp rift had imploded, it left a smooth-sided semi-ovoid, a perfectly formed crater ten metres deep.

  The vehicles of the Dreadwing accelerated into the dip, the legionaries keeping pace with war-plate-boosted strides. The grand cannons of the fortress could not adjust their aim quickly enough to follow the advance, so that the black line seemed to leave a wake of fire and explosions.

  Within fifteen seconds they were inside the range of the main batteries and the tumult ended. It was replaced by the flare of lascannon beams and the crack of autocannons. Heavy bolters snarled rapid-fire rounds into the approaching Dark Angels.

  The Dreadwing returned fire, their bolts passing through the energy shield, heavier weaponry still deflected and refracted from its insubstantial edge.

  ‘Heartpierce!’ Redloss snarled across the comm-feed.

  Overhead a throatier roar joined the whine of interceptor jets. Blunt-nosed and slab-sided, four Caestus assault rams sped towards the fortress, leaving trails of plasma exhaust. The blue gleam of powerfields surrounded their snub prows. Anti-aircraft guns sprang into life, filling the air with detonations, multi-laser fire ricocheting from the reinforced hulls of the manned projectiles.

  Boosters flared like suns, turning the aerial rams into dark blurs that snapped through the defence field, their havoc missile systems spewing rockets along the casements in the second before they hit the walls of the stronghold. Light burned whiter than the snow as magna-meltas developed to crack open the hulls of starships burst into life. The armoured prows slammed through the vaporised remains of the walls, depositing the legionaries aboard directly into the fortress.

  Redloss clambered down into the troop compartment as they drew within a hundred metres of the main fortress, the Spartan’s tracks cutting ridges along the smooth slope of the void-crater. Brace harnesses and inertia rams whined out of view as his companions stood at his back. He waited at the assault ramp’s edge, one fist hovering over the bright red activator, axe in the other.

  Missiles from Whirlwinds screamed over the Spartan to smash into the gates of the outer wall. Their warheads shattered into rad-infused shrapnel, contaminating the entire gatehouse with deadly splinters. Quad lascannons fired as the armoured carrier skidded across icy mud. Four beams sliced through the buckled remains of the gate. The armoured nose of the transport smashed through the remnants, sending twisted metal flying in all directions.

  Redloss smacked his fist against the ramp release. Hydraulics spasmed, sending the assault ramp crashing down, crushing three red-clad defenders beneath its bulk. At the head of his brothers, Redloss led the assault.

  The first waves of enemy were unaugmented Legion servants dressed in a mixture of padded flak armour and sturdier ceramite-laced scale or plated carapace. Some had bolters, most carried autoguns that chattered madly as they fired.

  Redloss held back for a moment, allowing the Terminators to take the lead, Danaes at the front. The voted successor’s power fist incorporated an auxiliary grenade launcher that hurled a volley of promethium charges into the midst of the enemy. Blossoms of fire engulfed a score of foes, turning flesh and clothing to ash that carried away in the wind of frag grenade detonations.

  The combi-bolters of the Terminators cut a bloody gash through the defenders, allowing the Dreadwing to push on, a hundred warriors through the breach in the opening minute of the attack. Phosphex churned from incinerator cannons, turning squads to ashes, the baleful flames seeming to climb through the fortress’ ports and murder holes.

  On the ramparts above, squads deposited by the Caestus assault rams worked their way along the battlement, slaughtering gunnery crews, their advance heralded by the crack of bolt-rounds and the bass judder of autocannons and heavy bolters. Rad-bombs scorched the defences, flaying skin from flesh, flesh from bone, the lucky ones despatched by snarling chain weapons, others simply left to die in screeching agony.

  Redloss moved left, waving his men forward with his axe. The enemy fell back from the courtyard immediately behind the gate, seeking shelter in the bastions that held up the next line of wall. Las-bolts and bullets screamed down from gun slits in the towers, sparking indigo flares from the energy field contained within Redloss’ artificer-wrought armour.

  Now that they were inside the citadel powerfields, the Dreadwing’s augurs crackled and pinged into life, flooded with enemy signals. Most were unaugmented serfs, but there were at least two score of thermal plumes that had to be powered war-plate of some kind.

  ‘Be free with your lethal attention, my brothers,’ Redloss called to his warriors. He rejoiced at seeing the Dreadwing in full force, for only rarely did a commander dare call upon them to act en masse. Constantine had told him of short-lived voted lieutenants that had never seen the marvel of the Dreadwing in action. In that regard the rebellion of Horus was a blessing. Not since the first years of the Great Crusade had the weapons of his brothers been in such demand.

  Vindicator siege tanks growled through the open gates and the broken sections of wall. Their massive thunderer cannons belched void-tipped shells that drew on the same ancient Terran technology as the annihilator cannon of the Intolerant. Swirling vortexes erupted along the next rampart, tearing chunks in the ferrocrete, purple-and-white implosions sucking warriors into the never-realm of the warp.

  Behind the Vindicators came Predator tanks, their turrets and sponsons pouring out the wrath of the Dreadwing through autocannons and lascannons, heavy bolters and plasma cannons. Spartans and Land Raiders added to the storm of fire, the glow of laser and muzzle flare lighting the grey walls with red and blue and green.

  In the wake of the armoured attack, more Dreadwing infantry reached the stronghold. They split, some ascending the outer wall to pour fire over the heads of their brothers while the bulk of the brotherhood pushed on towards the next fortifications.

  The demise of the fortress was inevitable now that the outer wall had been pierced, but Redloss had another concern.

  ‘Don’t let any of the traitor filth escape!’ he roared over the vox. ‘Push hard, push swift.’

  ‘Detecting massive energy surges from the eastern quadrant, on a sublevel, honoured Dreadbringer,’ one of the augur-carriers reported. ‘It must be the shield generators.’

  ‘Griffon rampant,�
� Redloss voxed to his warriors, using the coded war-tongue of the Order. ‘The drake’s breath by twilight. Blood-ridden on the sinister veil. Inverse chimera.’

  Every phrase was a shorthand for a formation and objective – each Dreadwing brother knew precisely his place and role in each. More a means to communicate principles and ethos than a specific engagement plan, the battle-cant allowed Redloss to convey complex information to a variable number of warriors.

  Those that operated under the guise of the Griffon, in this case mostly the Terminator squads and their accompanying Spartans, Mastodons and Land Raiders, took to the fore again, advancing against the second line of defence. Behind the shield of this attack destroyer squads with melta-weapons, rad-missiles and heavy flamers converged on the left flank. Warriors with jump packs ascended to the ramparts of the towers, dual bolt pistols spitting death, the sergeants’ phosphex grenades turning the upper storeys into fire-wreathed crematoriums.

  Other Dreadwing squads assembled behind the destroyers, the many heads of the chimeras gathering in one place to attack. Devastator teams unleashed salvoes of missiles while mole mortars fired subterranean rounds into the sublevels where the shield generators were located.

  Redloss monitored the advance from the second wave, his role to steer the wrath of his brothers, the guiding hand that would ensure the rage of the Dreadwing fell upon the correct point.

  The enemy counter-attacked, armoured gates to the far left wheezing open to reveal two Dreadnoughts – war machines twice the size of a Space Marine, piloted by venerable warriors too badly wounded to fight on without their massive armoured forms. With them came a score of World Eaters screaming battle cries, their blue-and-white battleplate stained red with Zephathian blood. A tide of unaugmented humans followed, shrieking and yelling in the wake of their superhuman masters.

  By themselves they posed little threat, but the traitors headed towards the flank of the Dreadwing force pushing hard to breach the towers closest to the generators. Gunners on the ramparts above were getting their aim in, and any delay would increase the casualties significantly.

  ‘Dreadbringer’s ire! Redden your blades!’

  With this command, Redloss broke into a run, heading towards the emerging traitors, the head of his axe leaving ruddy trails as he accelerated to a full sprint. His nearest close-combat troops followed as though drawn along by invisible tethers.

  A scathing volley of fire preceded Redloss’ counter-charge by a few seconds, fire directed down from the outer wall sheared into the armoured tip of the World Eaters’ thrust. A handful fell, torn apart by lascannon blasts and anti-tank missiles, the others pressed on towards their foes without hesitation.

  One of the Dreadnoughts, the plates of its armour painted in the livery of Angron’s XII, swung towards Redloss. Its right hand was a chainclaw, two metre-long tines edged with whirling teeth. Its left mount sported a quadruple autocannon that burst into life with a staccato snarl. The fusillade hit a Dark Angel a few metres to the left of the Dreadbringer, smashing him from his feet as black plate exploded into splinters. The Dreadnought raked its fire towards Redloss and he dived into it, taking two impacts against his plastron as he rolled through the flicker of tracer rounds. Another Dreadwing warrior was caught high, pauldrons cracking, helm turned to a buckled, broken mess by the storm of fist-sized shells that hurled his corpse into his brothers following behind.

  Redloss regained his momentum in a second and powered onwards undeterred. He could smell the blood of his brother spattered on his armour, and as he closed with the World Eaters the stench of old viscera assailed him through the olfactory intake.

  The stark image of the bone towers drove Redloss on. It was not the slaughter itself that riled him. He had been brought into the Dreadwing for his expertise in killing, and had ascended to the position of voted lieutenant upon a pile of indiscriminately slain corpses. It was a source of pride that he could number his dead foes in the tens of thousands. But he did not boast. Needless glorification, the hubris of exhibition offended his sensibilities.

  He had seen much of the Word Bearers and the legacy of the offensive they had called their ‘Shadow Crusade’ – he had been present at the interrogation of several prisoners. It was their assertion that the energy of the warp could be shaped by sacrifice and ritual, much as a psyker could, when properly trained, siphon warp energy into psychic powers within the material realm.

  Mostly nonsense, it seemed, but a twisted logic that underpinned their brutality.

  He pounded across the shell-pocked courtyard while more Dark Angels bounded past, their jump packs carrying them in long leaps towards the foe.

  The World Eaters were a different case. They made sport of their slaying. Redloss could admit that he liked to bring death. The power of ending another life was intoxicating at times. But it was the outcome that drew him, not the act. It mattered not at all whether he slew a foe with a bolter or a battle cruiser, the transition from living to dead was the same. The World Eaters he had faced during the purge of the Five Hundred Worlds were deluded, gaining pleasure from the fighting itself. The XII’s cerebral implants made them superior warriors but had turned them into raging caricatures of themselves, on occasion sacrificing victory for the sake of prolonging combat.

  The towers were wasteful, exuberant declarations of power. An abuse of the devastating potential that had been gifted to them by the Emperor. It was as alien to Redloss as the thought that his axe might enjoy cutting. That strangeness fuelled his hatred and made him want to destroy the perpetrators.

  The assault squad drove like a sword point into the oncoming defenders, bolt pistols barking, chainswords snarling. A last-moment storm of las-fire, bullets and bolts greeted them and then the two forces swirled together in wild melee.

  The Dreadnought crashed into the anarchy, its claws slashing and gouging, hacking through serfs and Dark Angels. It pivoted at the waist, beheading three of its own to smash spinning adamantium teeth through a descending assault legionary. Another Dark Angel was torn in two by the next swing, the powerplant of his backpack exploding into a miniature lightning storm as the gut-slicked claw cleaved him in half.

  The Dreadnought pilot spied Redloss and opened fire with the autocannons. The Dreadwing commander plunged through the hail, trusting to the protection of his war-plate’s field. An actinic aura of discharging energy engulfed him, and a second later he burst from the storm trailing purple streamers of energy, axe raised for the strike.

  His first double-handed blow hewed into the side of the main sarcophagus. The axe’s powerfield exploded into life, ceramite splintered and the ferrite layer beneath vaporised. The Dreadnought turned, lashing wildly with its claw. Redloss moved with the war machine, using its bulk against it, keeping out of reach.

  His axe swung up, severing hydraulics and bursting pneumatics in the hip. The Dreadnought listed to the right like a holed boat, making one last desperate lunge with its chainclaw. It caught a glancing blow across Redloss’ backpack. A cloud of ice particles from a ruptured coolant stream sprayed behind him.

  Ignoring the mass of the engine block, Redloss circled around once more. The Dreadnought spun its armoured torso on immobilised legs, trying to catch him. The voted lieutenant suddenly changed direction. He ducked beneath the slicing claw and slammed the power axe into the rotating sarcophagus, using his strength and the momentum of the Dreadnought’s spin to break open the pilot’s housing.

  The blade bit deep. Blood and artificial amniotic fluid fountained from the armoured womb-case. The pilot’s twitching death throes threw the Dreadnought backwards, claw carving furrows in the ground as it fell.

  Redloss did not give the downed war machine a second glance. Two World Eaters legionaries turned towards him, bolts from their pistols becoming smoke trails in the blaze of his energy shield. The Dreadwing commander launched into another charge, wasting no time.

  ‘Unlike you bloodthirsty savages,’ he snarled through his battleplate’s vocalisers, ‘
I’ll make this quick!’

  FIVE

  Darkness falls

  Ultramar

  The capital, Numentis, had been turned to rubble first, every man, woman, child and beast slaughtered in the earliest hours of the traitor attack. Nothing remained to call it a settlement, much less a capital, but it was in Numentis that the Lion raised his banner.

  Survivors came, in small groups, responding to transmissions and patrols sent out by the Dark Angels. Not many, a few hundred, a thousand at most by the end of the first planetary rotation.

  They had every right to be numb, shocked beyond comprehension by the atrocity committed against them. But here they were, grandparents shepherding grandchildren, infants helping elders, families and friends, neighbours who might have once feuded, all brought together in what should have been abject misery, but instead they came and they applauded the Dark Angels and called out the praises of the Lion.

  More than the towers, more than the corpse-fields they had found beyond the cities, and the thousands of frozen bodies in the void of orbit from destroyed system defence stations, this nearly broke Holguin’s resolve. The simple gratitude that came from being alive when so many were not.

  There was something remarkable about the indomitability of human spirit that had always made Holguin smile, but no more. Zephath had been burned, its defences destroyed and its major cities levelled. It was impossible to calculate the number of people that had been slain, nor the number that had given up their bodies to the grotesque towers of the Word Bearers.

  Indomitability was an inbred cousin of denial, it seemed.

  He had witnessed many things he knew objectively to be horrific, and been unmoved. He had slain foes on non-compliant worlds, knowing that as individuals they perhaps had no choice but to follow the rule of their defiant masters and mistresses. It was the price of compliance, the toll demanded by the Imperium to safeguard the future of all humanity.

  Even during the Thramas Crusade, when the Night Lords had used populations to bait their vicious traps and Curze had razed planets to cow resistance on others, Holguin had been sustained by a sense of purpose. The rebellion, the nature of what Horus had unleashed, had not really settled in his brain.