There was no shape to a drop assault, simply a swirling mass of fighters struggling for the upper hand. Strategy was nonsensical and tactics useless. All depended on simple ferocity and the will to win. Augmented Mechanicus soldiery clad in armour as outlandish as any of Kaarja Salombar’s corsairs swirled in bloody close quarters battle with Iron Warriors. Battle servitors stalked through the smoke, their presence announced by blazing gouts of fire and streams of gunshots. The battle was a seething mass of screaming warriors, slashing blades, snap-shots and thudding explosions.
Fizzing blasts of superheated plasma streaked past Honsou, and he felt the burn of their passing through the plates of his armour. If the siege to capture the Indomitable had rekindled his love of taking the iron to the stone, this fight was a reminder of the savage joy that could be had in the fiery cauldron of combat. He saw the glimmer of a targeting laser on his breastplate, and spun on his heel towards its source.
Someone barrelled into him, and Honsou was thrown to the ground as a roaring blizzard of heavy calibre shells sawed the air above him. Three of his Iron Warriors were hurled back, all but one pulped to shredded meat and bone by the barrage.
He craned his neck to see the Newborn lying on top of him, its helmet a blasted ruin on one side where a shell had torn the ceramite. One of its stormcloud eyes stared through the mass of twisted metal, blinking in the sudden light.
The Newborn reached up and tore off the useless helmet, revealing its loathsome patchwork skin. Blood and oily light seeped from its head, but as Honsou watched the leathery skin began to knit together until only the bloodstain remained. The Newborn’s regenerative powers seemed also to stretch to allowing it to breathe in this toxic environment.
“You are being careless,” said the Newborn over the remains of its gorget vox, sounding like a drill instructor admonishing a particularly stupid cadet. “Did you not see the danger?”
“Get off me!” yelled Honsou. Figures moved in the roiling smoke banks, but where their allegiance lay was impossible to tell.
“Gun servitors,” said the Newborn, pointing into the smoke as it rolled clear. “Praetorian class. Assault cannons.”
Honsou swung his bolter around as three clattering machine warriors emerged from the haze. Each was taller than a Space Marine, the hard grey flesh of their torsos fused with a heavy track unit, like a mobile artillery piece. Their skulls were black and white death masks and the musculature of their upper bodies was massively exaggerated, swollen with gene-bulking and enhanced with cybernetic augmentations to carry the implanted assault cannons that replaced their forearms. Enormous ammo hoppers spewed copper-jacketed casings as their weapons sprayed lethal fire.
He squeezed his trigger, pummelling the nearest Praetorian with shots. It rocked back, chunks of dead meat and armour blasted clear, but such machines were built to last. Targeting lasers flickered in the smoke and fastened on Honsou and the rest of his squad.
Before the Praetorians could open fire, a dark shape flashed through the smoke and landed on the ammo hopper of the leftmost machine. Lightning-wreathed claws slashed down and a heavy arm clanged to the floor as it was neatly severed. Sparks and oil-dark blood sprayed from the wound as the black shape drove his claws down through the machine’s neck and bisected it from collarbone to stomach.
Ardaric Vaanes vaulted over the second machine, his claws sweeping out to decapitate it as he kicked off from its chest to land on the shoulders of the third Praetorian. Silver steel flashed and the machine collapsed as the renegade Raven Guard tore out its heart and throat with a series of quicksilver slashes. It had taken less than five seconds.
Despite himself, Honsou was impressed. He’d known that Vaanes was a superlative ambush predator, but to see this up close was a stark reminder of the fact.
“That was careless,” said Vaanes, stepping forwards and offering Honsou a hand up. Honsou ignored it and stood with an insouciant shrug.
The Newborn nodded. “That is what I said.”
“I thrive on danger,” he said. “What you see as careless, I see as daring.”
“Daring will get you killed,” said Vaanes. Honsou laughed. “And you’d grieve for me, would you?”
“Hardly, but that’s not the point. Without you there is no army here, just a bunch of killers on the rampage. You keep reaching for the victory that’s as likely to see you dead as triumphant and this whole enterprise is as good as over. Don’t you care about that?”
Honsou rammed a fresh magazine into his bolter, feeling the axe on his back awaken with the scent of blood on the air.
“That’s what you never understood about me, Vaanes,” said Honsou. “I don’t care. I do what I want because it is who I am. Anything else is a lie and if there is one thing I can say of myself, it is that I will never compromise who I am. Not for the powers of the warp, not for the M’kar and certainly not for you. When death is a heartbeat away, I am truly alive.”
Honsou turned away, uncomfortable with such honesty. “That’s the only way I know how to live,” he said. “What else is there?”
LEX TREDECIM, THE immense, cliff-sided Capitol Imperialis, rumbled through a high-sided gorge at the centre of a great convoy of armoured vehicles and troop transports. The roadway led through the Mountains of Twilight towards Guilliman’s Gate, the vast portal fortress that led down to the network of caverns beneath the surface. Only this route through the mountains would allow the Imperial forces to reach their destination in complete safety.
Within the command bridge, Uriel watched the feed from Highside City on the holo-globe hovering in the centre of Lex Tredecim’s long bridge. The interior of the Mechanicus vehicle was unlike any other such command leviathan Uriel had travelled within, its fittings alien to him with their bizarre, inhuman machine parts. Nothing within the enormous vehicle looked designed for use by unaugmented mortals. Every command station was manned by a servitor or a tech-priest so far removed from humanity that it was difficult to tell them apart.
The panels of its logic engines and drive controls were machined bronze and steel, gleaming with fresh coatings of sacred oils and impossible to use without cybernetic enhancement. An acrid haze of incense sympathetic to the machine spirits caged within each terminal drifted from the recyc-vents, and Uriel tasted oil and metal in the back of his throat.
Pasanius and Learchus stood to either side of him, as Shaan paced the command deck like a stalking predator. Inquisitor Suzaku watched the carnage within the globe impassively, her hands laced behind her back and her white hair scraped back in a severe ponytail.
Magos Locard’s limbs clicked on the brushed steel decking as he altered position, a number of extruded mechadendrites plugged into the projection unit below the shimmering holo-globe. They gathered around the shimmering sphere, watching through the gun camera of a heavily armoured Praetorian, catching fragmentary, juddering images of the fighting.
The targets of the battle servitors’ guns were obscured by blazing muzzle flashes the instant they were revealed, but the stark contrast of their iron armour and yellow and black trims was impossible to mistake. Though Uriel had known the nature of the foe they would face on Calth, it was still a shock to see the Iron Warriors at war on a world of Ultramar.
“How much longer can your forces give us?” asked Uriel, his voice hard as stone.
“Projection: at current rate of attrition, there will be none left alive within twenty-seven point three minutes,” answered Magos Locard.
A flickering bar of light appeared at the base of the globe, diminishing with every passing moment, and Uriel realised it was a measure of the number of warriors left in Highside City.
“Turn that off,” he said. “I will take your word for it.”
“Ah, you find the numerical visual rendition of life distasteful.”
“We do,” said Shaan. “These warriors are giving their lives so that we may get below. They should be remembered as more than just numbers.”
Locard looked askance. “Th
ey shall be, Captain Shaan. Their designations will be stored within the memory coils of Lex Tredecim, and the Mechanicus never deletes anything.”
“That’s not what he means,” said Pasanius.
“I apologise,” said Locard, “but do the Ultramarines not record the designations of your dead upon the stone of the Temple of Correction?”
“We do,” agreed Uriel, seeing where Locard was going.
“This is no different,” said the magos. “Save that the Mechanicus way is more permanent.”
Uriel could see his veteran sergeants about to take offence at the notion of Macragge’s impermanence, but forestalled their outrage by saying. “We each remember our dead in our own way, magos, and who is to say which method is superior?”
Locard looked to be on the verge of answering that question, but whatever humanity was left within his skull wisely decided to interpret it as rhetorical.
“As you say, Captain Ventris, remembrance of the dead takes many forms.”
Satisfied he had made his point, Uriel watched impassively as the battle servitors and skitarii fought their desperate battle against the Iron Warriors. Aethon Shaan looked over and said, “Will twenty-seven minutes allow us to reach Guilliman’s Gate?”
“No, but it will get us close enough that we will reach it before any pursuit can catch us.”
“Good enough,” said Shaan, returning his attention to the furious battle on the holo-globe.
A group of Iron Warriors emerged from the smoke, their leader running towards the machine bearing the gun camera. Uriel immediately saw a dreadful familiarity in the arrogant swagger of the warrior’s movements.
“Hera’s bones!” swore Pasanius, recognising the warrior’s gleaming silver arm, an artificial limb that owed nothing to the ministrations of a tech-priest. Blazing muzzle flare obscured the Iron Warriors, and Uriel took an involuntary step towards the shimmering globe, his hand reaching for the hilt of his sword.
“Honsou,” hissed Uriel, staring at the warrior within the crackling image. “Damn it, but I hoped we were wrong. Even after everything, I didn’t really think it could be him.”
“That’s him all right,” said Pasanius, with a glance over to Learchus. “I’d recognise that cursed arm anywhere.”
The image blurred as something dark flashed in front of the gun camera. Sparks flew and arcing traceries of lightning slashed across the image as it skewed sideways.
“What happened?” demanded Uriel.
Darting light flickered behind Locard’s eyes and a series of flashing red icons streamed over the curved display. “The servitor has been rendered inactive by lethal damage that exceeds its ability to retain functionality,” he said.
“Someone killed it,” translated Learchus. “Who?”
The image hissed with static, jerking and washing in and out of focus, as a warrior in black armour walked into shot. Broad-shouldered and moving with a grace that reminded Uriel of Shaan’s supple ease, the figure bore a set of long claws on each gauntlet.
“Him, I’m guessing,” said Pasanius.
Uriel recognised the warrior with a jolt of sick horror, but it was left to Aethon Shaan to name the killer of the battle servitor.
“Vaanes,” spat Shaan, his own claws snapping from his gauntlets with a sharp, metallic click of sliding steel. The image flashed with static and rippling lines of interference as black engine fluid seeped over the image before it crackled one last time and froze.
The wavering tableau remained on the holo-globe, framing the architects of this bloodshed. Pinpoints of light flashed over the black-armoured warrior, mapping out his body mass and indexing it against supplied records.
“Adeptus Astartes records match biometric analysis,” confirmed Magos Locard. “Ardaric Vaanes, battle captain, 4th Company of the Raven Guard Chapter. Declared Excomunicatus Mortis 934.M41.”
“I need no machine to tell me that,” hissed Shaan. “I would know that traitor anywhere.”
Learchus leaned forward as the afterimages of the muzzle flare faded. “If that is Honsou, then who is that with him?” he asked.
Uriel peered at the fuzzy image and the breath caught in his throat as he found himself looking at a dead-featured reflection of himself. Locard froze the image and the Imperial commanders stared in open-mouthed horror at the dead skin mask looking back at them.
Its face was unmistakably that of Uriel Ventris.
HARD-EDGED MOONLIGHT sheened the jagged granite mountains of Talassar, imparting a shimmering, blushed texture to the bands of azurite that flecked every rock. On any normal night, Varro Tigurius would have found the view quite beautiful, worthy of rendering in a wild and tempestuous painting, where the cold blues and vivid purples of the sky would contrast starkly with the paleness of the mountain stone.
But on this night, there was no beauty: there was only blood and death.
The ocean planet’s only continent was named Glaudor, and the survivors of the Caesar’s destruction climbed through the foothills of the Lirian Mountains, close to where Roboute Guilliman had broken the greenskin horde in the years following the Great Betrayal.
Abandoning the Caesar had cut every warrior deeply, but grief would have to take second place to survival. The enemy would be upon them soon, and to remain in the open was to die. Just over two thousand of the Caesar’s crew escaped the dying battle-barge, borne to the surface of Talassar in saviour pods or Thunderhawk gunships. There was no panic, for these were citizens of Ultramar. Though only a hundred were Ultramarines, the Chapter serfs, helots and Defence Auxilia were men and women who trained every day to be worthy of Roboute Guilliman’s legacy.
Yet as stoic and controlled as every heart undoubtedly was, there was not one amongst the survivors who could fail to be moved by the Caesar’s death.
The mighty battle-barge had streaked towards the ground like a glittering comet, its hull ablaze with the fire of atmospheric entry. Tigurius had forced himself to watch its final flight as it vanished over the horizon to plunge into the vast ocean that covered the bulk of the planet’s surface.
“We will never see her like again,” said Marneus Calgar, and First Captain Agemman had wept to see so mighty a vessel destroyed.
Moments later, the daemons attacked.
Unfolding from the air like bloodstains on a blank canvas, they fell upon the survivors in a fury of fang and claw. Scores had died before anyone realised what was happening, but the iron discipline of the 1st Company crushed any panic before it could take hold and slew the vanguard of M’kar’s daemon host with disciplined volleys of gunfire.
The only hope of survival lay in the mountains, and so had begun this gruelling march into the high peaks, with packs of snapping daemon creatures harrying them at every turn. The column of survivors trudged into the high peaks on limbs weary beyond imagining, but each man and woman was determined to survive and avenge the death of their beloved vessel.
This latest attack was the sixth they had endured since landing on Talassar, and as the mortals climbed higher, the Ultramarines veterans turned to fight.
Relentless volleys of storm bolter fire echoed from the sides of the canyon, hammering blasts that pulped scaled flesh and exploded within immaterial bodies with explosive fury. Arcing jets of promethium sprayed from heavy flamers and streams of missiles from cyclone missile pods hammered the narrowest point of the canyon, where a host of warp-spawned abominations surged in a tide of inhuman bloodlust.
Beasts conjured from the darkest nightmares of mankind shrieked and howled as they clawed their way over the rocks. Sinewy daemonic hunters with twisting horns and reptilian bodies scaled the rocks with hooked talons and whipping tails. Monstrous creatures with elongated skulls and grotesquely fanged jaws bounded over the rocks with surging leaps as powerfully muscled spawn creatures with grasping limbs of claw and sucker slithered towards the Ultramarines battle line.
None could survive the punishing barrages laid down by Captain Agemman’s 1st Company veterans.
r /> Marneus Calgar stood in the centre of the battle line, torrents of gunfire blasting from the bolters worked with great cunning into the underside of his famous gauntlets. The Chapter Master picked his targets with rapid precision, and such was his skill that not a single shell was wasted.
Tigurius felt the courage of the warriors around him as a physical force, a resolute strength that was stronger than adamantium and could never be broken. The warriors of the 1st Company stood shoulder to shoulder with their captain and the master of their Chapter. No force in the galaxy could break their resolve.
Tigurius hurled arcing bolts of coruscating fire into the daemons, his power inimical to the unclean existence of the horde. Warp flesh melted at its touch and Tigurius relished the screams of the damned creatures as they were hurled back to their infernal realm.
With every volley, the daemonic horde melted away until the sound of gunfire diminished and silence descended on Talassar.
Without any words needing to be spoken, the Ultramarines turned and plunged deeper into the mountains, climbing through winding canyons and over great chasms. Agemman led the way at the head of the column.
Tigurius matched step with Marneus Calgar, who favoured him with a nod of acknowledgement. “Once again your prescience has saved lives,” he said.
Tigurius accepted the compliment gracefully and said, “Are we headed where I think we’re headed?”
Calgar nodded. “It is our only hope of life, Varro. It galls me that I must lead our enemies there too, but where else is there?”
“It is a good choice,” said Tigurius. “It is a place of Ultramarines legend, a grand tale of impossible victory told to the Chapter’s neophytes to instil the proper appreciation for our primarch’s glory.”
“It’s a risk, and you know it.”
“True, but it is our best chance of survival. And if I may be blunt, my lord, you must survive. If you fall, Ultramar will fall.”