by Nick Kyme
It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.
Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Astra Militarum and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants – and worse.
To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
ADEPTUS ASTARTES
Salamanders Sixth Company
Drakgaard, Ur’zan, Captain
Her’us, Champion, ‘Serpentia’
Sepelius, Kratus, Apothecary, ‘Serpentia’
Onagar, Pyroclast, ‘Serpentia’
Zetok, Pyre warden, ‘Serpentia’
Tul’vek, Banner bearer, ‘Serpentia’
Kaladin, Battle-brother, ‘Serpentia’
Tseg’un, Battle-brother, ‘Serpentia’
Vervius, Battle-brother, ‘Serpentia’
Elysius, Chaplain
Zantho, Akadin, Veteran sergeant, tank commander
Kor’ad, Venerable Dreadnought, ‘The Warmaker’
Kadoran, Veteran sergeant
Kessoth, Sergeant
Vah’gan, Sergeant
V’reth, Sergeant
Salamanders Fourth Company
Iaptus, Sergeant, ‘Wyverns’,
Va’lin, Battle-brother, ‘Wyverns’
Dersius, Battle-brother, ‘Wyverns’
Naeb, Battle-brother, ‘Wyverns’
Ky’dak, Battle-brother, ‘Wyverns’
Arrok, Battle-brother, ‘Wyverns’
Xerus, Battle-brother, ‘Wyverns’
Illus, Battle-brother, ‘Wyverns’
Vo’sha, Battle-brother, ‘Wyverns’
Sor’ad, Battle-brother, ‘Wyverns’
Bar’dak, Goran, Sergeant, ‘Targons’
Amadu, Battle-brother, ‘Targons’
Ush’ban, Battle-brother, ‘Targons’
Ramadus, Battle-brother, ‘Targons’
Nerad, Battle-brother, ‘Targons’
Salamanders, Third Company
Agatone, Adrax, Captain
Exor, Techmarine
Xarko, Librarian
Zartath, Battle-brother, former Black Dragon
ECCLESIARCHY
Angerer, Maelisia, Canoness Preceptor, Order of the Ebon Chalice
Laevenius, Celestian, Sister Superior, Order of the Ebon Chalice
Stephina, Seraphim Sister Superior, ‘Archangels’, Order of the Ebon Chalice
Avensi, Seraphim Sister Superior, ‘Shrivers’, Order, , of the Ebon Chalice
Cassia, Seraphim Sister Superior, ‘Sanctifiers’, Order of the Ebon Chalice
Helia, Seraphim Sister Superior, ‘Exculpators’, Order of the Ebon Chalice
Revina, Non-militant Adepta Sororitas
‘CURSED’ ASTARTES
Urgaresh, Champion
Thorast, Apothecary
Ghaan, Former vexillary
Skarh, Black Dragons Chapter, the ‘wrath’
Haakem, Black Dragons Chapter, the ‘wrath’
ARCHENEMY
Faustus, Heklion, Warlord, Black Legion
Gralastyx, Daemon Prince of the Eye
Vorshkar, Champion, the ‘Chosen’, Black Legion
Children of Torment
Kargol, Terminator
Kaid, Terminator
Lufurion, Champion, Warlord of ‘The Incarnadine’
Klerik, Renegade Astartes, ‘The Incarnadine’
Preest, Sorcerer, ‘The Incarnadine’
Juadek, Renegade Astartes, ‘The Incarnadine’
MORTALS
Redgage, Colonel, Cadian 81st
Issak, Medicus
Makato, Kensai, Lieutenant Armsman on the Forge Hammer
Jedda, Master-at-arms on the Forge Hammer
THE OTHERS
Kinebad, Archeotech hunter
Scar-borne, Mercenary, former gladiator
PROLOGUE
An old lie
It began with Sejanus. It began with his corpse and the corpses of his Glory Squad red-carpeting the throne room floor of the High City. They had died invisibly, by unseen hands. Retribution for the treachery that had laid them low would be ostensibly more visible. It would come at the hands of Hastur’s brothers, vengeance for a favoured son.
A speartip was formed, oaths sworn. A legion descended on Sixty-Three Nineteen with one desire in its heart. It wasn’t compliance. It was a desire for blood, a way to level the scales of treachery balanced against it.
It began with Sejanus. It ended at the induction gate.
Faustus skirted the edge of the main battlefield with a company of genhanced warriors in tow. The Twenty-First Velites were armour-light compared to the majority of their Luna Wolf brothers. Designated reconnaissance, they carried bolters and long-barrelled viper-class sniper rifles, scoped and modified for mass-reactive ammunition. They moved fast, quietly and without fuss.
Thirty led by a Centurion roared up an exterior stairway appended to one of High City’s flanking sub-towers. In ruins, half flattened from cursory bombardment, it nonetheless clung to life and though much of the tower structure was destroyed, a large section of wall had endured. Klaed had spotted the vermin through his scope. Hooded and cloaked, but with the tiniest scrap of flashing silver on magenta giving them away. Careless. One man’s laxity had signed his entire unit’s death warrant.
‘How many, Klaed?’ asked Faustus, pausing. He had been pacing the steps three at a time, a characteristic spring in his motion. The Centurion loved war. He lived for it. There was but one thing he placed above it: the warriors in his charge.
A broad-shouldered Luna Wolf, muddy-white half armour clamped around his bulky torso, lowered the scope. ‘Thermal imaging puts them at eighty-six. Give or take.’
‘It is give or take, brother?’ asked the warrior directly behind Klaed, whose pepper-stubbled jawline never betrayed a smile.
‘Easy there, Klaed,’ said the warrior, clapping a meaty hand on Klaed’s shoulder. Ahenobarbus was half a head taller and a shoulder width broader. He wore a leather skullcap, strands of his long hair allowed to flow freely from beneath it. His combat shotgun was low slung, his finger rested alongside the trigger.
‘What does it matter, Clod? Eighty-six, one hundred and eighty-six. These men are wal
king dead anyway.’
Ahenobarbus half turned so he could scowl at Narthius.
‘That is not my name, pup.’
The young Luna Wolf beside him grinned. ‘But it suits you so well.’
Narthius’s face was gaunt, but handsome where most of his brothers’ were blunt and flat. A shorn crest of dark hair cut his cleanly shaven scalp in two even hemispheres of tanned skin. Ahenobarbus thought Narthius over-preened and had remarked so on more than one occasion. In turn, Narthius described Ahenobarbus as a lump of heavy meat, blunt but useful if pushed and aimed in the required direction.
Both had saved each other’s lives more times than they needed to count. That tally paled in comparison to how many times Faustus had saved the lives of all of his men. Reconnaissance units faced a harder task than most. Though admittedly not always at the brunt of the fighting, they were often without support nor as heavily armed or armoured. Quick minds, decisive action. It was a greater shield than any power armour or even Cataphractii plate, or so Faustus believed.
‘You two will have time to spar later,’ he said, cutting the banter short. ‘With me, if this operation doesn’t go smoothly.’
As they moved out again, Narthius patted Ahenobarbus on the back. ‘Don’t worry, Clod. I won’t let them kill you today.’
Ahenobarbus kept up the act for a few more seconds before his scowl faded. Laughter lines crossed with his numerous scars, as perfect white teeth were exposed in a feral grin.
‘Let’s hope they don’t spoil your youthful good looks whilst you’re saving my life, eh, pup?’
Faustus had reached the summit of the stairway, a wide but pockmarked path of cratered stone with one side facing a granite wall, the other a partially destroyed iron railing. It was high up, the wind catching his cape and causing it to flap spasmodically. It also offered a good vantage of the larger battlefield.
On the left flank, Abaddon was driving First Company hard. Faustus couldn’t see the Centurion individually but recognised his vexilliary’s banner. Evidently, Ezekyle wanted the honour of breaching High City before anyone else, but Tenth were already approaching the gate. Their vanguard was engaged with the gate’s guardians. Strong-looking men, well armed and equipped but not the equal of a legionary. Titans roamed at the battle’s periphery, drawn back from the fighting companies of Luna Wolves now the need for men, not machines, took precedence. A fake dawn was still fading in the distance from the sundered starship that had crashed in the border districts. It threw light across the three kilometre-wide mass of Legio Astartes battleplate battering successfully against High City’s door. False Emperor or not, Sixty-Three Nineteen’s potentate was about to learn a lesson in the ephemeral nature of rulership.
The covered gallery of the stairway had led 21st to overlook the induction gate. An enfilading position.
‘Velites!’ Faustus cried out so as to be heard above the thunderous battle. At the summit of the stairs, the hair fled from his face in streaks of white as the wind tugged at it, and his eyes flashed sapphire-blue in the reflected flare of distant lightning. It was easy to follow men like Faustus, and Faustus knew the importance of never being afraid to demonstrate that. He raised his drawn gladius. Come the assault, he would sheath it again, but for now it served a solid purpose in cementing his image and invigorating his men. ‘We blood them now!’
At Faustus’s bidding, Brother Ezekus came forward and attached a pair of melta bombs to the gallery’s access door. It was barred, bolted and evidently well fortified but the wrought iron sloughed away in seconds against the violent burst of microwaves. Shroud bombs were thrown through the growing aperture in advance of the Velites. Faustus stepped through first, amidst smoke and scanner-foiling electro-static. His enemies appeared as monochrome green spectres through his night vision goggles. A cough from his rifle and the man closest to him went down, throat exploded just as he had begun to turn. Two more shots in rapid succession killed near-identical targets.
The gallery was long but also narrow. A parade of firing slits lined its east-facing wall, overlooking the battlefield. Fixed weapon mounts lay in every alcove, an array of energy carbines, solid-shot cannons and high-powered sniper rifles.
Faustus fired quickly and on the move, vacating the breach so the rest of the Velites could file in behind him. The legionaries fanned out across the width of the gallery as they entered the tight space, their rifles whispering promises of death to the enemy. Men collapsed in droves, soon too many to be ignorant of, folding up as if their bones were suddenly turned to paper and could no longer support them in their armour.
One turned, a flash of magenta armour revealed as his cloak parted with the rapid movement. He gaped at the apparitions emerging from the sea of fog that had suddenly risen up around him, but had little time to concern himself. The soldier was about to raise the alarm, but found he could only quietly choke with the combat blade suddenly embedded in his neck. He fell without further sound. Faustus was on him before his cooling corpse hit the ground, kneeling and then retrieving his blade in one swift motion.
Twenty-four were dead, the first eight teams, before the enemy realised they were under attack and attempted to counter. By then, Faustus and his men were amongst them, knives drawn for close quarters. In the tight confines of the corridor, the gurgling refrain of slit throats merged with the raucous discharge of legionary combat shotguns and bolters as the secondary units moved in.
At the end of the gallery, the survivors had marshalled a makeshift defence. They broke some of the cannons out from their concealed nests, rolled in whatever they could to fashion a barricade and set up behind it, weapons blazing.
‘Grab cover!’ Faustus bellowed across the vox, though his voice carried down the gallery well enough without it.
The Velites reacted as one, vacating a fire corridor where energy rounds and solid shells were chewing up the gallery floor. Glass and mosaic spat upwards in a cloud of shrapnel. The gallery had once been an artful place but war had rendered it into something entirely uglier.
Faustus rolled, chased by a fusillade of enemy fire that chipped stone and made the dead bodies jerk in animated parody. He moved rapidly out of the central aisle and up against the nearest alcove set into the wall. They were shallow but offered some protection.
Ahenobarbus took a hit to the leg, some kind of phase-weapon. Pain bled out of him in an angry roar as his flesh was burned black, and Narthius had to drag him clear.
‘Told you I wouldn’t let them kill you, Clod,’ he said, replacing a spent clip.
Ahenobarbus grunted, pressing his muscular body into the wall.
‘Flesh wound, pup. Takes more than something like that to kill me.’
‘Our limits will be tested soon enough,’ Faustus told them both with a dark smile. He and the other two Luna Wolves were holed up together, hunkered down behind a granite column being chipped back by aggressive suppressing fire.
‘You want us to take that barricade, sir?’ asked Narthius, forced to shout above the din.
‘I know you would if I ordered it, brother. But no. As robust as even Ahenobarbus here is, a headlong rush into those guns is suicide. I’d have a more heroic death for the Velites, and this isn’t it. Not this battle. Not this day.’ He turned his attention across to the opposite side of the corridor, through the hail of bullets and energy beams, to where Klaed was taking cover with Ezekus.
Faustus opened up the vox by tapping the bead embedded in his ear.
‘We need to divide their attention. Can you fashion me a diversion, Rakon?’
Rakon Klaed nodded, not bothering with the vox. He tapped Ezekus on the shoulder, who was kneeling down in front of him, acting as spotter for the rest of his unit but with mixed success, and asked him a question.
The demolitions expert nodded curtly once and went to his bandoleer.
Faustus turned back to Ahenobarbus and Narthius, sizing up
the big warrior first of all.
‘Can you walk?’
‘I’ll run if you ask it of me, sir.’
‘I only need a kick, brother. A hard one.’ Faustus gestured to the firing slit. It was damaged from an errant shell explosion or some such and cracks lined the stone around the broken slit, promising a much wider aperture if forced.
Ahenobarbus lashed out with all his considerable strength and the slit broke apart, sundered stone sent tumbling from the ruptured aperture. In the noisy carnage of the battle no one paid it any attention. It was also now large enough to accommodate a fully-armoured legionary.
Faustus strapped his rifle over his shoulder so that he could draw a pair of combat blades. The edges were serrated and shone dully in the gloomy light of the gallery. Narthius was watching, and followed suit.
‘Three volunteers,’ Faustus said to the others in the two adjacent alcoves. ‘Not you, brother,’ he added to Ahenobarbus when he tried to offer. ‘A kick is one thing, but a climb…’ He gave him a conciliatory pat on the shoulder.
Eight Luna Wolves, all the legionaries in ear-shot stepped forwards. Faustus picked three – Kern, Faek and Henador – and passed Ahenobarbus to hang out of the gaping hole the hulking warrior had made for him.
‘Fifty metres,’ he said to the others, who had crept forwards to get as close as they could to their Centurion. ‘We won’t have much time. We’ll need to move quickly. Charges?’
Kern proffered his captain a pair of krak grenades. He was a veteran warrior, greying hair tied back in a pony tail that snaked down the back of his neck.
Faustus thanked him.
‘On my mark then, blades at the ready.’ He looked across the gallery floor through a gulf of unremitting enemy fire but found Klaed waiting for his signal. Faustus gave it and in his next movement plunged through the gap in the wall and back outside into the battle proper.
Klaed simultaneously patted Ezekus hard on the back and the squat demolitions expert flung a cluster of shroud and frag grenades he had bound together with wire.
Smoke and fire filled the confined gallery space, which rang with the thunder of explosives.
