“Redemption? It’s not for the likes of me, Uriel. I tried it, but it didn’t take.”
“So you chose damnation instead?”
“I thought I had, but turns out that’s not for me either.”
“What are you talking about?”
“This,” said Vaanes, twisting in the steel chair to show the curve of his deltoid muscle. Uriel leaned down, seeing a stark black raven tattooed on Vaanes’ skin. “This is why I surrendered to you.”
“A Chapter tattoo you’re not fit to bear,” said Uriel. “What of it?”
“You don’t understand, I know. I’m not sure I do either.”
“And what do you mean you surrendered? We captured you.”
“You think you could capture a warrior trained on the Ravenspire?” laughed Vaanes. “I let you take me.”
“Say I believe you, and I do not, why would you do that?”
Vaanes looked away and sighed. “I don’t know that either, not for sure, but when I saw you I knew I didn’t want to go back to the Iron Warriors.”
“So why did you fight so hard?”
Vaanes shrugged. “I couldn’t let the Newborn see me go down without a fight.”
“The Newborn?”
“The thing they made out of your genetic material on Medrengard.”
“It doesn’t have a name?”
“It never seemed to want one,” said Vaanes. “I think it had a name once, but it doesn’t want to remember it. We never gave it one, because… well, no one cared enough to.”
“I know its name,” said Uriel. “I’ve seen what they did to it. I felt its fear and its pain.”
“So it wasn’t all a one way street after all,” said Vaanes. “It learned of you too. How do you think the Iron Warriors have been one step ahead of you all this time?”
“It knows my thoughts?”
“Something like that. It thinks like you, straight up and down, and no matter how much Honsou and Grendel fill its head with their talk of Chaos, it can’t escape what you gave it.”
“And what’s that?”
“Nobility,” said Vaanes, and Uriel saw the earnest need to be believed on the renegade’s face. “It wants to be better than it was created to be, but everything around it beats it and crushes any attempt it makes to lift its head out of the horror. If I’d thought about it at all, I’d have felt sorry for it, but I’ve seen the things it can do, and pity is the last thing the Newborn needs. It’s a monster, but it didn’t have to be.”
“And what about you?” asked Uriel. “Are you still a monster?”
“I don’t know, probably,” said Vaanes, nodding towards the tattoo on his shoulder. “But maybe not. I gouged that tattoo out a long time ago. But now it’s back. You tell me what that means.”
“It means nothing,” said Uriel, gripping Vaanes beneath the chin and tiling his head back. For a split second he wanted nothing more than to wrench it to the side and snap the renegade’s neck. He could do it, he could kill this enemy before him right now, but he did not. Killing a prisoner was without honour, and was beneath him.
He released Vaanes and turned away. “What is it you think it means?”
“I don’t know, but it wasn’t there until we made for Calth. Perhaps it’s a sign I’m not beyond redemption. Perhaps its Corax making sure he leaves his mark on my corpse. Who knows for sure?”
“Redemption isn’t something you get offered more than once,” said Uriel. “You made your choice and now it’s time to face the consequences. We caught you, and now you are going to pay for all the lives you have ended. On Tarsis Ultra, on Tarentus.”
As Uriel spoke, Vaanes looked away, unable to look him in the eye as he listed his crimes. Perhaps this was merely guilt, not remorse. Was there a difference?
“What is it that you want, Vaanes?” said Uriel.
“I want to die,” said the renegade. “I’m not strong enough to walk the path of righteousness, and I won’t damn my soul to the warp. There’s no middle ground for the likes of me, so when this is done, promise you’ll kill me and I’ll show you where they’ve gone.”
Uriel looked deep into the hooded eyes of the man he had fought beside and watched turn his back on all that he once stood for. Within Vaanes there was the core of a great man, but one cursed with some deep-rooted flaw that had seen him undone.
“What happened to you?” said Uriel.
“I’ll never tell you,” said Vaanes. “Now do we have a deal?”
Uriel considered lying to Vaanes, after all, what was a promise made to a traitor? No oath could be considered binding made to one such as he, but even as he formed the thought, he knew that to lie to Vaanes was to diminish himself.
He nodded. “Tell me where Honsou has gone.”
Vaanes saw his truth and nodded gratefully. He let out a long, shuddering breath, and to Uriel it seemed as though a great and terrible burden was suddenly lifted from his shoulders. Vaanes sat up straighter in the chair, looking more like a warrior of the Adeptus Astartes than ever before.
“No,” said Vaanes. “I’ll show you.”
NINETEEN
BOLTER SHELLS AND las-rounds smacked off the armoured flanks of the Rhino, ringing from its armour like steel rain. One shell had punched through a corroded track guard and ricocheted around the interior of the troop compartment, but most of its force had been spent and the armour of the Thunderbolts protected them from harm.
Scipio worked the twin bolters in the cupola from side to side, only shooting when he was sure of taking down multiple foes. Not that there was any shortage of targets since they had blown through the roadblock. Scipio had taken down three of the enemy warriors with concentrated bursts of fire, and Laenus had crushed another beneath the Rhino’s tracks.
No sooner had they penetrated the inner precincts of the city than Scipio had been forced to revise his earlier opinion of the Bloodborn army. The central plaza of Corinth was now packed with prefabricated structures laid out with military precision. Colourful pennons flapped in the wind, and a garish blue banner trailed from one of the palace towers. What had once been an open space where the citizens of Corinth had taken the air, visited a museum or gallery, was now an armed camp. Almost every square metre was taken up with ammo stores, weapon dumps, barracks or training facilities.
Here was organisation and discipline to rival any Imperial Guard regiment. This was an army of conquest, and the sight of such logistical competence chilled Scipio to the bone. Their battered and smoke-belching Rhino crashed through barracks tents, shooting ranges and mess halls, leaving a trail of devastation in its wake. Burning canvas from crushed tents trailed behind them like the sail of an ancient fire ship sent out to its doom amid an enemy fleet.
The metaphor was an apt one, thought Scipio.
Bloodborn warriors spilled from a barracks building, men and women clad in a riot of colours and armour. Scipio spotted several blue sashes of officers and he felt a surge of exultation. These were corsairs of Kaarja Salombar!
Scipio turned the bolters on them, firing a long burst of explosive rounds. Seven men dropped, torn up by the volley, and the others scattered. Surrounded by so many temporary structures, the Bloodborn were finding it hard to draw a bead on the Thunderbolts’ Rhino, but those that could were unstinting in their return fire.
A las-round grazed Scipio’s shoulder and a hard round spanked from the hatch rim on his left. Zipping tracers whipped past his head, and Scipio swung the bolters around, sending a series of sawing blasts through a row of Bloodborn tents as their occupants ran for weapons and armour.
“For Guilliman and the Emperor!” he yelled, working the fire of his guns over the enemy. It felt good to be fighting again, to be taking a measure of revenge for the suffering these warriors had inflicted on the people of Espandor. The Rhino lurched forward and Scipio heard the awful squeal of grinding mechanisms and the unmistakable sound of an engine seizing up.
He risked a glance over his shoulder to see flames and thick ropes
of black smoke pouring from the rear of the Rhino. Laenus had worked wonders coaxing every last shred of life from the vehicle, but its spirit was done and could go on no more. That it had taken them this far was a miracle. It was time to disembark and continue the fight on foot.
Scipio scanned the terrain, modified as it was by the Bloodborn constructions and additions. He already had a destination in mind, but whether the captured Rhino would reach it was another matter entirely.
“Laenus, point us towards the gatehouse before the praetor’s palace!”
“I don’t know it’ll get that far, but I’ll try,” shouted Laenus.
A line of colourfully-clad Bloodborn warriors had formed a firing line ahead of the Rhino, and Scipio dropped inside as a volley of las-fire hammered the front of the Rhino. A missile slammed into the Rhino’s glacis, but Helicas and Coltanis had fixed sheet steel plating over the vehicle’s front and the missile corkscrewed away without detonating. More fire teams were preparing to shoot, and the Thunderbolts had seconds at best before the Rhino was reduced to a smouldering wreck.
“Everyone out!” shouted Scipio.
Nivian hauled open the door and Coltanis leapt out of the moving vehicle. Scipio followed, and the rest of the Thunderbolts hit the ground running right behind him. Laenus was last to exit, but the Rhino kept going, spewing smoke and flames as it careened towards the Bloodborn. The enemy parted to let it roll through, but no sooner had the Rhino ground to a halt when its engine block exploded, cutting down the Bloodborn and shooting plumes of burning fuel in all directions.
Perhaps the Emperor was watching, perhaps it was simply a fortuitous coincidence or perhaps the warrior spirit of the Rhino was exacting a measure of revenge for its harsh treatment. Scipio would always believe it to be the latter.
Using the smoke and confusion as cover, Scipio led the Thunderbolts through the crowded mess of burning tents and timber-framed barracks. Fires were spreading through the plaza, and screams echoed from the buildings on the edge of the plaza. Amid the grey and brown of canvas and prefabricated steel, the brilliant blue of the Ultramarines armour was a blaze of colour amid the drabness.
A volley of shots reached out to them, and Scipio felt the impacts on his back and shoulders. He swung to face the source of the shots and sighted down the length of the gun at a group of corsairs led by a woman with crossed blue sashes across her chest and a cockaded bicorn hat. Ludicrously impractical on a battlefield, it gave Scipio a point of aim.
“Mark your targets,” he shouted. “Ammo is scarce, so make every shot count.”
He fired and the corsair woman pitched backward, her shoulder and head vanishing in an explosion of bone fragments and red mist. A quick burst of fire killed half a dozen more and sent the rest diving for cover. “With me!” shouted Scipio. “Make for the palace gatehouse.” Scipio set off towards their objective, running with his bolter at his shoulder.
Its golden roof shone like the brightest sun, and the colourful facade of its painted stone seemed like the grandest most magnificent thing Scipio had ever seen. Though the Bloodborn had defiled its lower reaches, it was easy to imagine the building in its prime.
A high wall of polished grey granite surrounded the palace, embellished with high towers of fluted marble and statues of heroic Ultramarines whose lineage could be traced back to Espandor. At the southernmost curve of the wall was a gatehouse flanked by two drum towers. The silver-topped ramparts of these towers were now home to grotesque anti-aircraft guns with multiple black steel barrels aimed skyward.
Bloodborn warriors were moving to intercept them, but again the crowded nature of the plaza was Scipio’s ally. The Thunderbolts formed a fighting wedge on Scipio, and they plunged into the heart of the enemy with unmatched fury. Masked warriors came at them with bayonet-tipped rifles or curved swords and pistols. Scipio switched to his chainsword, cutting through the Bloodborn with brutally mechanical strokes of his roaring blade.
Nivian fired the pistol Scipio had given him, while Coltanis targeted enemy support teams and destroyed them with controlled bursts of plasma fire. They forged a path through the enemy, never stopping and never allowing the Bloodborn to steal the momentum of their charge.
Scipio saw six Rhinos and a Land Raider thunder into the plaza, garishly painted vehicles in orange and black. Another two in the rust-brown blood of the Skulltakers kept going, crushing Bloodborn soldiers in their desire to reach Scipio’s warriors.
The plaza was in uproar now, flames and gunfire and the screams of the dying filling the air. The gatehouse had once boasted an armoured portal of banded Espandor oak and iron, but nothing now remained of it save twisted hinge mechanisms and blast marks. A corsair skiff was manoeuvring through the gateway, its gunners turning the prow cannon on the Thunderbolts.
“Coltanis,” shouted Scipio. “Take it out!”
“Plasma’s still charging,” came the terse reply from his specialist gunner.
There was no avoiding the cannon, and Scipio just hoped its gunner was too hurried, too unskilled or too inaccurate to prove a threat. The weapon blazed with light and noise, and Scipio hurled himself to the side as a hurricane of high-energy las-bolts tore up the cobbled plaza. Stone fragments pinged from Scipio’s armour and he felt a fiery pain down the side of his thigh where a beam had struck him and melted part of his armour.
He rolled to his side, seeing that two of his warriors were down. Seius and Asellio, their amour rent by molten gouges from which no one, not even a Space Marine, could survive. Howling Bloodborn warriors and corsairs were charging towards them, and the skiffs gunner was lining up another shot.
A blue-white bolt of energy shot up from the ground to punch through the underside of the skiff. It blazed up into its body and struck the energy cells at the heart of its anti-grav mechanisms. A seething plume of fire exploded out of the gateway, funnelled into a cone of orange flame that rolled over the Ultramarines and set nearby Bloodborn warriors aflame.
Scipio pushed himself to his feet, knowing they had been handed another boon.
“Good shooting, Coltanis,” said Scipio, running into the flame-wreathed gateway. He vaulted the wreckage and stepped over a dozen charred and blackened bodies. The Thunderbolts followed him, their armour protecting them from the lethal flames as Scipio kicked down the door to the leftmost tower. Ten corsairs filled its lower chamber, but Scipio’s first volley cut down four of them. They fired back, and he grunted in pain as one shot penetrated his chest armour. Then Laenus and Nivian were at his side.
The Bloodborn died in a hail of shots, and Scipio pounded up the stairs of the tower, making his way towards the roof. A mix of Bloodborn and Corsairs filled the tower, forty in all, but in the cramped confines of the stairs and side chambers, they were no match for the Space Marines, who slaughtered them all with grim efficiency.
Scipio heard shouts from below, but by now they had reached the roof of the tower. The gunners manning the anti-aircraft batteries had depressed the barrels of their quad-guns, but too late to make any difference to their fate. The pursuers below could only be traitor Astartes. Who else could survive the flames in the gateway?
Scipio looked out over the chaos of the plaza. Fires raged unchecked through the centre of the city, and though it grieved him to set a city of Ultramar ablaze, he knew it was in service of a greater good. Thousands of Bloodborn and corsairs garrisoned the city. More were pouring into the plaza with every passing moment.
“Coltanis, Helicas,” he said. “Watch the doorway to the stairs. We’re going to have enemy Astartes coming through there any moment.”
Scipio pointed to the giant anti-aircraft guns and said, “Laenus! Take Natalis, Isatus and Bradua and get those guns turned around. We’ll be needing them before long.”
Laenus nodded and set to work on the big guns. “Sergeant!” cried Nivian. “You’re going to want to see this,” Scipio ran over to the palace side of the towers and followed Nivian’s extended arm.
Surging from the pala
ce were three heavily laden skiffs, up-armoured from the one they had destroyed in the gateway and adorned with streaming banners, gilded decorations and outrageously flamboyant iconography. They offended the eye with their lurid colours, but it was the figure standing on the command deck of the centre skimmer that caught Scipio’s eye.
It was a woman, barely clad in strips of lacquered leather and vivid fabrics that caught the light and made her shimmer with colour. With more than a hint of inhuman eldar to her lithe frame, and a wild mane of azure hair flowing around her shoulders, there could be no mistaking the identity of the woman.
“Kaarja Salombar,” hissed Scipio. “The Corsair Queen.”
Nivian stood alongside him. “Looks like we’ve got her riled up, sergeant.”
Scipio smiled. “I think you might be right, Nivian.”
His helmet vox, so long inactive while they hunted their prey, crackled as he activated it once more and broadcast on the emergency frequency Captain Sicarius had chosen for the execute signal.
“This is Scipio Vorolanus,” he said, ducking down as a blizzard of gunfire struck the parapet. “Location: the centre of Corinth. Code Suzerin! Code Suzerin! I have a visual on the Corsair Queen. Repeat, I have a visual on the Corsair Queen.”
The vox fizzed and popped, and Scipio feared that his message hadn’t got through when a voice he recognised as Sergeant Daceus of the Lions of Macragge broke through the static.
“Acknowledged,” said Daceus. “Hold position and be ready. Out.”
“Here they come!” shouted Helicas as the traitor Astartes burst onto the roof of the tower.
THE CAVERNAS DRACONIS cut through the upper mantle of Calth in a warren of tunnels that no one had yet fully mapped. New tunnels were being cut every year and, since cave-ins were far from uncommon, most maps were obsolete within a few years of their commissioning.
Four Rhinos descended into the heart of Calth, delving into this labyrinthine network of caves with a traitor as their guide. The battle to take Four Valleys Gorge had fallen silent for now, the Bloodborn forces content to lick their wounds and regroup after the devastating destruction of the Black Basilica. Chaplain Clausel commanded the Ultramarines forces, a role he had accepted with stiff formality after Uriel had transferred command.