Space Marine Battles - the Novels Volume 1

by Warhammer 40K

  Nethata looked upon the vista on Malevolentia’s bank of pict screens, rotating the angles slowly, marking the destruction his forces had wreaked. Heriat sat opposite him, watching as position runes and scrolling databursts recorded the deployment of the assets under the Guard’s control.

  Malevolentia had come to rest atop a low rise in the centre of a ruined industrial facility in the heart of the wastes. The space around the tank had once been a storage yard for chem-transporters. A few of the old vehicles remained intact, clustered around the edge of a rutted concrete rectangle. They were dwarfed by the gigantic machine standing in their midst. Its engines still laboured, producing a thick pall of smoke from its rear stacks. The ground behind it was shattered where it had crashed through the yard’s perimeter fencing.

  ‘The final groups have reported in,’ said Heriat eventually, concentrating on the screens in front of him.

  ‘And?’

  ‘All squadrons intact. Some losses from counter-attacks during the withdrawal from Axis, but within your predicted parameters. The targets around us can no longer muster significant return fire.’

  Nethata grunted with satisfaction.

  This is the way to wage a war. Careful, judicial, logical.

  ‘We will move again soon,’ he said.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Heriat. ‘Refuelling and supply are already under way.’

  Nethata was reassured by his progress. He still had formidable forces at his disposal. Taking account of the mobile artillery pieces, the heavy armour and the rapid-reaction troop contingents, he had sole possession of an army in its own right. He was weak in air support since the debacle of the first attack runs, it was true, but then the enemy was deficient in that area too. Despite Rauth’s mismanagement of Territo’s substantial resources, enough remained to give him hope that the campaign could yet be salvaged.

  ‘Has Princeps Lopi made contact?’ Nethata asked.

  ‘He has.’ Heriat’s voice sounded almost grudging. ‘Do you wish to acknowledge?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Nethata. ‘Why didn’t you say? And, if you don’t mind, I’d like to take this alone.’

  Heriat looked surprised at that.

  ‘As you wish,’ he said stiffly, unstrapping himself from his seat and clambering upwards out of the narrow command chamber. The hatch slammed shut behind him, sealing Nethata in.

  Nethata swivelled around to face the chamber’s hololith pillar, keying in the authorisation on a copper-plated panel. He didn’t like giving Heriat orders like that. It felt disloyal, almost impertinent, but the man was a commissar, and the things he had to discuss with Lopi were delicate.

  I shall make it up to him, he thought. I shall make all this up to him when this madness is over, and everything shall go back to the way it was before.

  The hololith column rose up from its base, grinding on old gears. Nethata smoothed his crumpled uniform and adjusted his position. No one looked their best after days cooped up in a Baneblade, but the little things were still important.

  A luminous face laced with cables and metal jack-nodes flickered into being above the pillar, shifting and crackling with interference.

  Nethata bowed.

  ‘Princeps Lopi,’ he said, addressing the lithfeed. ‘I am sorry this is the first time we have spoken face-to-face. We should have done so properly before.’

  The princeps didn’t respond initially. Though it might have been an artefact of the long-range hololith transport, it looked for all the world like he had recently been crying.

  ‘I felt them,’ said Lopi.

  The words left his mouth awkwardly, as if he’d spent so long using binaric that Gothic had become uncomfortable to him.

  Nethata hesitated. He wasn’t sure he’d heard him correctly.

  ‘As I say, I’m sorry if–’

  ‘I felt them.’ Lopi’s voice was broken and halting. As he spoke, his eyes wandered. He hardly seemed to register Nethata’s presence. ‘I felt them go, one by one.’

  Nethata suddenly started to doubt the usefulness of the conversation.

  ‘I can see that your grief is still acute, princeps,’ he said, speaking carefully. ‘Perhaps it would be better if–’

  Suddenly, Lopi’s gaze snapped into focus. He looked at Nethata, and something like embarrassment rippled across his augmented features.

  ‘No, I am sorry.’ His right cheek twitched. ‘I would not expect you to understand. You see, we feel one another. We are one another. You are alone. We are many. Their voices, they linger. But it should not affect my judgement; I apologise.’

  Nethata studied the flickering feed carefully. The princeps was in a bad way. From all the files Nethata had scanned, Lopi was an experienced commander, a veteran of dozens of engagements; he should have been used to death in battle.

  Then again, Shardenus was a strange place. The corrosive, decaying atmosphere had a way of getting to you. The adepts of the Mechanicus were an odd breed, too – perhaps the deaths of their war engines really did affect them.

  ‘You have my deepest condolences,’ Nethata offered, unsure whether anything he could say would make much difference. ‘I believe I understand your position – I have lost men, too. Both our armies have suffered more than is needful. That is why I hoped you would wish to talk, to find some kind of… accommodation.’

  Lopi’s fractured face looked steadily at him.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Nethata cleared his throat awkwardly.

  ‘I mean this,’ he said, embarking straight into the case he had long prepared. ‘The clan commander feels nothing for the souls under his command. I have argued from the start that his pace is too fast, that it risks exhausting our forces before our goal can be achieved. Those arguments have fallen on deaf ears, but now, perhaps, I am not alone in sharing them.’

  Even through the shifting, shimmering layers of the lithfeed, Nethata could see that Lopi was interested. Cautious, but interested.

  ‘Explain exactly what you mean, Lord General,’ Lopi said. ‘I do not have the time for hints.’

  Nethata felt his pulse begin to pick up. He was committed now.

  ‘We have had communication from Rauth,’ he said. ‘He has wasted the forces under his command in an attempt to take the transit corridors quickly. The Warhounds, as you know, have been lost. My Guard regiments fighting with him have been reduced to a fraction of their former numbers. His own Space Marines have taken heavy losses. No satisfactory explanation for this has been forthcoming. Perhaps it is pride, but he will admit no criticism of his tactics.’

  Lopi said nothing, but kept listening.

  ‘He needs us, princeps,’ said Nethata. ‘He needs my armour, and he needs your engines. I have already received orders to bring all my forces into range for immediate assault on the Capitolis. If your sensori has not already received similar requests, he will soon.’

  ‘I have not been taking communications,’ said Lopi.

  ‘Well, when you do,’ said Nethata, ‘that will be the content of them. But here is the thing: we – you and I – we are not subordinates, ripe to be ordered into whatever massacre is lined up next. We are commanders of noble forces. We deserve consultation. We deserve respect.’

  Lopi’s grainy face looked wary.

  ‘You are under his command, general,’ he said. ‘I am bound by bonds of allegiance. Are you proposing what I think you are?’

  Nethata smiled.

  ‘Mutiny?’ he asked. ‘No, nothing like that.’

  He realised his fists had clenched tightly against the arms of his seat, and gradually relaxed them.

  ‘I propose holding our ground, that is all,’ he said. ‘We wait here, out in the wasteland. We do not advance. We keep our guns – all of them – here in reserve. If he wants them, he will have to come to us. He will be furious, for sure, but what can he do? Only talk. Listen. Compromise.’

  Lopi’s expression was hard to read over the fuzzy lithfeed.

  ‘You seem to have everything
worked out,’ he said.

  ‘I do,’ said Nethata. ‘I want the Axis hives taken out. I want raids on the remaining peripheral spires, taking out their long-range weaponry. I want time to resupply and regroup the ground forces, and I want an agreed strategy for the taking of the Capitolis. I will commit no further resources under my authority until I have assurances of their usage.’

  Lopi started to reply, but Nethata kept speaking.

  ‘One more thing, please, before you respond,’ he said. ‘Know that I am no craven, nor am I a traitor. I have fought a lifetime for the Emperor and know the price of warfare. If I thought it necessary for victory, I would sacrifice my regiments, and myself, a thousand times over. But I am also no butcher, and do not throw the Imperium’s finest weapons – its mortal souls – needlessly into the fire. Rauth will listen to us if you join me. He will have to. He will be forced to see the sense of it.’

  Nethata thought then of his meeting with Magos Ys, and remembered what she had told him.

  ‘This is the only way,’ he said. ‘We cannot hope to persuade, except by the withdrawal of what he needs. They are machines, the Iron Hands; they are monsters, and their minds are closed. They only respect strength, and together we will be strong enough.’

  Nethata stopped talking. He sat motionless, waiting for Lopi’s reaction.

  The princeps didn’t respond. His face hung expressionless over the column, shaking and breaking up in the low, filmy light.

  Nethata didn’t dare to press him. He waited. Only when he began to wonder if the audio feed had somehow been compromised did he speak again.

  ‘Princeps?’ he said. ‘Did you hear me correctly?’

  Lopi looked back at him. There was no mistaking it this time – trails of tears marked his cheeks, glistening where they had collected on his exposed augmetics.

  ‘I have heard your words, Lord General, and considered them,’ he said.

  Another agonising pause, and then he spoke again.

  ‘We stand together,’ he said.

  Nethata felt a wave of relief flood through him.

  ‘I am glad to hear it, princeps,’ he said, smiling despite himself. ‘This is the right decision; this is where the tide turns.’

  He had to fight to stop himself smiling. Now, all things were possible. Now the battle could be conducted on sensible terms.

  ‘This is where we remember our dignity,’ he said.

  Morvox stalked through the foetid transit tunnels, striding across the scenes of ruin. Smoke rolled lazily across the floor, sinking into wells and blast craters. A faint tang of musk still clung to the blackened and broken landscape, mingling with stronger smells of charring and decay.

  Clave Arx had spread out thinly, each warrior heading out into the shadows to hunt down the last of the enemy and retrieve the remaining mortal forces for the renewed assault. In addition to Fierez, two battle-brothers of Arx had been slain before the doors were closed and the combat had ebbed at last. Once their progenoids had been recovered and their armour taken away, none of the surviving members of the clave made any mention of them. They went about their duties just as they always did – silently, efficiently.

  Morvox didn’t question that. He felt no grief for the warriors’ passing: they had been weapons, instruments of the Emperor’s vengeance, and death in battle was something that would come for all of them in the end.

  Only mortals grieved. Morvox watched them as they trudged along the tunnels around him, lined up in ragged columns, their eyes dull and their expressions slack. Some them had the staring looks of men in shock; others were plainly terrified, as if the deep shadows still held creatures that could harm them. Many had to be threatened with execution before they would get back to their feet. The occasional hard bang of bolters from further down the immense transit corridor indicated that those threats were carried through.

  Morvox paused for a moment, watching a line of dishevelled Ferik Guardsmen make their way out of the gloom and towards the gates. He found himself strangely absorbed by them, just as he had been by the fighters in the Melamar hive. Their movements were clumsy. They went slowly. Their killing potential was negligible; only in huge numbers could they hope to turn the course of battles.

  Something about them captivated him. The sensation made him uncomfortable.

  Once, on Medusa, vanishingly far into his past and long before he’d begun the journey from mortal childhood into superhumanity, Naim Morvox had broken his left arm. He had done it while working in the burning hell of his land engine’s enginarium. The pain had been sudden, eye-watering in intensity, and he’d struggled not to scream.

  Then he’d seen the wound. He’d seen his white bone protruding from between torn muscle. He’d watched his blood well up in the gash, hot and thick and nearly black. He’d felt faint, and had slumped back against the drive housing.

  After that the crew had come for him. They had given him sedatives and stitched his arm up and strapped up the wound. A week later he’d been back at his station, proud of the scar and proud of the residual pain.

  Every so often, even much later, he remembered how he’d felt before they had come for him. He remembered the strange fascination of the broken skin, the meat-red muscle, the oozing fluids. He hadn’t been able to look at it – it had made him feel sick. He hadn’t been able to look away from it either.

  That was how he felt then, on Shardenus, looking at the mortal soldiers making their way back to the front. They fascinated him in the same ghoulish, repulsed way that his mangled forearm had fascinated him.

  I am going mad, he thought. They are what we live to protect. They are the Imperium. I am going mad.

  ‘Brother-sergeant.’

  Morvox whirled around, startled out of his thoughts.

  Iron Father Khatir stood before him. Morvox bowed, ashamed to have been surprised by Khatir’s approach – moving power armour was not the quietest thing in the galaxy.

  ‘Iron Father,’ he acknowledged. ‘I thought you were with the clan commander.’

  ‘I was,’ said Khatir. ‘Now I am here.’

  As soon as Khatir said those words, Morvox knew what was coming next.

  ‘Earlier, I was dis–’ Morvox began, attempting to get his penance in early.

  ‘Twice, you have questioned an order,’ said Khatir. His even tone was no different than it ever was, but somehow the words carried an undertow of menace. That was what the Iron Fathers could do – they could shame, inspire, cow, infuriate, all with words alone.

  Morvox saw Khatir’s gauntlets glint in the darkness, ready, as ever, for use. For a second, he imagined them flashing up, bursting with flame, ready to strike at him.

  ‘I am shamed by it,’ he said, careful to speak only the truth.

  ‘I see that,’ said Khatir. ‘I have been watching you, brother-sergeant. I have been watching you ever since we fought together in that bunker. Just now, I watched you as you paused in your duty. I saw you stand in these tunnels, and I imagined what thoughts were going through your head.’

  Morvox felt a brief stab of resentment, and swallowed it down. It was hard to be talked down to, even by an Iron Father.

  ‘I will work harder,’ he said. ‘I have been remiss.’

  ‘You have. But I know what ails you.’

  ‘You… I…’ Morvox struggled to find the words. ‘What ails me?’

  Khatir made no move towards him. He made no gesture of reassurance, nor of condemnation. He stood in the midst of the tunnels, surrounded by the ravages of war, and spoke as quietly as he always did.

  ‘The beast is most dangerous when closest to death,’ he said. ‘The beast within you is dying, Morvox. It is lashing out. This is a perilous time for you. You are caught between two worlds.’

  As the Iron Father spoke, Morvox felt as if something was stirring within him, writhing in his innards like a snake. It indeed felt like some sinuous animal had coiled around his hearts, squeezing against them like a noose.

  ‘You are changin
g,’ said Khatir. ‘You are losing the last remnants of your past. You can fail here. I have seen others fail, and it is not something I wish to see again. There is no place within the Iron Hands for failure.’

  Khatir lifted his gauntlet and rested it heavily on Morvox’s shoulder guard. The gesture was a bizarre one for a Medusan to make, and Morvox resisted the urge to recoil. He didn’t know whether it was meant to convey reassurance or act as a threat.

  ‘You still remember pity,’ said Khatir. ‘You look at the cattle who serve alongside us and you mourn their deaths in service. You wish to nurture them, to explain what we are doing, to help them understand. But they will never understand. Even our brothers in other Chapters, those rare ones who are our equal in devotion, even they cannot understand as we do.’

  As he listened, Morvox felt the twisting sensation within him grow worse.

  ‘They have no future,’ said Khatir. ‘The universe holds no place for them. Only the strongest will endure, and nothing is stronger than the machine.’

  Morvox had heard such things said many times, but for some reason the words stabbed at him harder then. He didn’t want to listen to them – they made him feel sick. He didn’t want to stop listening to them either.

  ‘A time will come,’ said Khatir. ‘It will come for you soon. You will forget pity, and you will see the weakness we carry within us. Then you will understand the need to change, to improve, to excise that weakness.’

  Khatir exerted pressure on Morvox’s shoulder.

  ‘Until that time comes, remember who you are. Do not fail. Never question an order again.’

  Morvox looked directly up at the Iron Father’s facemask. He couldn’t decide whether the visage was horrific or benign. He felt the weight of the gauntlet on him, heavy like the bonds of death.