A searing plasma shot vaporised the torso of the second corsair and a hammerblow from a heavy bolter wielded like a giant club bore the last to the ground. Before the felled warrior could rise, Nivian stamped down on his chest and put three shots into his skull.
“Nice catch,” said Coltanis as Helicas and Nivian surrounded their sergeant in an ad-hoc honour guard. Scipio held the banner high, overwhelmed by the honour of bearing so sacred a relic into battle. Such a responsibility came with duty, and Scipio felt a wave of determination sweep through him.
“Onwards, brothers!” he shouted, lowering his head and setting off at a jog to where Sicarius and the Lions of Macragge fought the chosen warriors of the Corsair Queen. Daceus was down, a short blade jutting from his chest and terrible las-wound in his thigh. Apothecary Venatio fought to save him as Malcian fought three corsairs with his bare hands. They bore him to the ground, stabbing with energy-sheathed daggers, but still he did not give up.
Prabian fought at Sicarius’ side, keeping the corsairs at bay with lethal cuts, wide slashes and sudden lunges. None dared come too close to his blade, for it bore death on its edges. Sicarius fought with growing desperation and fury against the Corsair Queen, his armour awash with rapidly-drying blood.
Scipio and his men slammed into the corsairs attacking Malcian and killed them in a flurry of stabbing blades and gunshots. More and more Ultramarines were pushing into the fight, galvanised by the sight of the freshly risen banner and driven into paroxysms of rage at the nearness of its fall. Men had willingly given their lives for centuries to protect this symbol of all it meant to be an Ultramarine of the 2nd Company, and there was no greater honour than to fight beneath its gold and blue iconography.
Scipio ran towards Sicarius as the Corsair Queen spun in to deliver her coup de grace. The tempest blade deflected the first and second blow, but could not hope to block the third. Salombar’s sword plunged into Sicarius’ chest, and the captain of the 2nd cried out in pain as his heart was split in two. The tempest blade tumbled from his grip, but as Salombar drove him down with the force of the blow, Sicarius saw Scipio coming and gripped the straps of her armour in a death grip.
“Now, Scipio!” shouted Sicarius, holding the Corsair Queen fast.
Scipio held the standard high and brought the sharpened end of the banner pole down between Salombar’s shoulder blades. The swirling haze of energy that had protected her from blade and bullet could not save her against a weapon touched by the hand of Marneus Calgar and empowered by the Emperor himself. Scipio drove the banner pole through Kaarja Salombar’s body, the golden tip bursting out between her breasts in a wash of thin blood.
Sicarius pulled her close and slammed his helmet into her face as Scipio wrenched the banner free. The Corsair Queen slumped against Sicarius, who recovered his tempest blade and rose to his feet over his vanquished foe. He gripped her by the liquid blue of her hair and she looked up at him, defiant even in death.
She spat on his feet and the tempest blade came down in an executioner’s arc, cutting her head from her neck in one blow.
“So perish all enemies of the Second!” shouted Sicarius and the wave of panic at her death spread like a stone dropped in a still lake. Sicarius lifted the head of his vanquished foe and nodded at Scipio.
“With me, Sergeant Vorolanus!” he snapped. “Hurry!”
Sicarius loped through the remains of the battle and clambered onto the wreckage of the Corsair Queen’s downed skiff. The gold was melting from its hull and purple flames bellowed from its crackling energy cells and ammo canisters. Scipio followed him up the ramp of wreckage as the bloodied Lions of Macragge formed a protective ring around the hulk, though there was precious little in the immediate vicinity to protect it from. The death of their queen had sent the corsairs fleeing, and the traitor Astartes who still fought were being isolated and destroyed by newly arrived assault squads.
Thousands of Bloodborn warriors remained in Corinth, but Sicarius looked set to take them all on himself as he climbed to the tapered prow of the skiff. Scipio stood behind Sicarius, the intense heat billowing up from the flames below him making the banner flap and furl in a glorious fashion.
With the fires and the banner behind him, Sicarius held the head of Kaarja Salombar for all to see. Her blue hair streamed out from the grisly trophy, unmistakable to all who saw it, and the effect was palpable as a wave of disbelief spread through the surviving Bloodborn.
“Your queen is dead!” bellowed Sicarius, lifting the shimmering blade of his sword over his head. “This is a world of the Ultramarines, and this is where you will all die. I, Sicarius of Talassar, swear this upon the head of your slain queen!”
Sicarius looked down at Sergeant Daceus and said, “Contact Governor Gallow, Daceus. Tell him we need him now.”
Daceus nodded, and within moments, thunderous explosions bloomed in the outskirts of Corinth, mushrooming clouds of fire and smoke that could only have come from Imperial artillery. Scipio watched as those explosions marched deeper into the city, the hammerblow of multiple artillery impacts shaking the ground underfoot. The skiff groaned as the vibrations threatened to topple them from their perch.
“Best get down, Sergeant Vorolanus,” said Sicarius. “Wouldn’t want to spoil the glorious memory of this moment by falling, eh?”
Scipio nodded, turning and making his way carefully to the ground.
“My lord, I don’t understand,” he said to his captain. “Governor Gallow’s forces are here?”
“Of course, you don’t think I’d attack on my own, did you?”
“But how? I sent the execute signal to you no more than an hour ago.”
“Even before you, Fennion and Manorian set off into the wilds, I’d suspected it would be Corinth you’d find the Corsair Queen. I had Saul Gallow deploy his forces from Herapolis a week ago and ordered him to push towards Corinth. All I was waiting for was final confirmation from you.”
Scipio was amazed at the daring of the manoeuvre, but also the danger of it.
“What if you’d been wrong?” he asked, aware of the risk he was taking in second guessing his captain. “What if she’d been at Actium or Nova Ala or even Montiacum?”
Sicarius stepped close to Scipio, and he felt the simmering ire of his captain.
“The question is irrelevant, sergeant,” said Sicarius, taking the banner from him. “I was not wrong, and I have won a great victory for the Second and the Ultramarines. That is all that matters, do you understand?”
Scipio’s face hardened. “Yes. It was a great victory, captain.”
ALL WAS DARKNESS. No, not quite darkness. Winking red warning runes and a filmy, sea-green illumination swam at the edge of his vision. Uriel blinked the dust and blood from his face. The darkness slowly resolved into blocky shapes and jagged edges of boulders and fluted carvings piled around, on top of, and beneath him.
A smooth face stared back at him, pale and unblemished, its eyes blank and expressionless. It took a moment to realise the face was carved from marble, its immobile features regarding Uriel and his plight impassively. He twisted his neck as his augmetic eye adjusted to the gloom, amplifying the bioluminescent glow from the cavern and gradually lightening his surroundings.
A solid slab of marble pressed down on him, its edges sheared in the fall from the roof. Chunks of blue stone lay strewn around him, the remains of the dome no doubt. Uriel flexed his limbs, relived he could feel and move his extremities. His spine was still intact at least.
He remembered looking into Honsou’s eyes as the Iron Warrior triggered the demolition charges, but nothing beyond that save the brightest flash in the world and a titanic cascade of roof coffers and structural members.
A thin slice of light angled from above his head, and he twisted in the grip of the tonnes of rubble, gradually working his arms loose and flexing his legs to gain purchase. He pushed up on the slab pinning him to the ground and felt it shift a fraction. Bunching his muscles, he pushed with all his strengt
h, feeling the slab grind against others as it shifted. Rubble creaked and groaned around him, and Uriel kept his movements slow for fear he might bring more down on himself.
Gradually the slab moved enough for him to free his legs, and he manoeuvred himself into a sitting position. His armour was terribly damaged, but it had held against the enormous pressure threatening to crush him to death.
“I am in your debt, Brother Amadon,” he said, thanking the spirit of the warrior who had worn the armour before it had chosen him. But for its protection, he would have been flattened to a red paste. Lying on the ground beside him was the napped-flint dagger, and Uriel tucked it into the empty sheath of his combat blade. Though his normal blade was much larger, the slender poniard slotted home perfectly.
Dust trickled down from above and he heard the clatter and rumble of settling stone. How long had he been trapped beneath the ruins of the tomb, and how many others had survived? Was he the only one to live through the tomb’s collapse, or were there others even now desperately scrambling to reach the surface?
Slowly Uriel eased himself into a void within the rubble created by two sheer sided panels of engravings that had landed at an angle to one another. A breath of air touched him, and he walked in a stoop towards its source, seeing another teasing beam of light filtering down into the dust-filled wreckage. He reached the light and looked up, seeing a crooked chimney of rock that led up to an opening in the vast pile of rubble that had once been a tomb.
“Is anyone else alive?” he shouted. There was no answer, but the debris groaned at the sound and a fresh rain of pulverised rock fragments fell upon his face.
Gingerly testing each handhold, Uriel climbed the rock chimney, pulling himself slowly towards the surface. It took thirty careful minutes, but eventually he was able to throw an elbow over the edge of the rubble. A metallic hand reached down to him and he froze as he thought Honsou had waited on the surface just to finish him off.
“Didn’t think that would kill you,” said Pasanius, gripping the edge of his shoulder guard and hauling him all the way out. “I told them you were too stubborn to die under there.”
“Pasanius,” gasped Uriel, embracing his old friend in relief. “You’re alive.”
“Of course I’m alive,” said Pasanius, as though any other notion was foolishness of the highest order. “What? You think all it takes to kill me is someone dropping an entire tomb on my head? What do you take me for?”
Uriel nodded, spitting a mouthful of dust. “Indeed, what was I thinking?”
“We’d about given up on you, but I told them you’d be too stubborn to let that bastard get you like this.”
“Them? There are other survivors?”
“Of course there’s others,” said Pasanius, shaking his head at Uriel’s question. “You’re the last one out.”
“Thank the Emperor,” said Uriel, letting out a relieved breath.
“Come on, let’s get off this ruin before fate runs out of a sense of mercy.”
They made their way down from the piled heap of broken marble, glass and steel that was all that remained of the once mighty structure. It seemed inconceivable that a building that had stood for ten thousand years could be destroyed, but the evidence was right before Uriel’s eyes.
Only when he reached the solid rock of the giant cavern did he start to feel safe. His fellow warriors were gathered in a small group, with Selenus working on Brutus Cyprian and Livius Hadrianus. Peleus looked remarkably unscathed, as though he had just walked from the ruins instead of being nearly buried alive in them. Petronius Nero paced in a tight circuit, the broken stub of a sword clutched in his hand, and Uriel left him to grieve the loss of so fine a blade. Captain Shaan sat apart from the Ultramarines, kneeling beside a shattered body whose identity was all too clear from its wounds.
Inquisitor Suzaku lay on her back next to Cyprian, her limbs and body restrained with makeshift splints formed from sword sheaths and snapped weapons stocks. Her face was ghost-like and gaunt, her eyes sunken in their sockets.
“How are they?” asked Uriel.
Selenus looked up. “Hadrianus will require extensive internal surgery to live and Cyprian will likely lose that leg.”
“And Suzaku?”
“She’ll probably die before we can get her to a medicae facility.”
“Maybe she’ll surprise you,” said Uriel. “I think she’s tougher than she looks.”
“She’d better be,” said Selenus. “I don’t think there’s a bone in her body that isn’t broken.”
Uriel turned back to Pasanius and asked the question he had been afraid to voice.
“Any sign of Honsou?”
Pasanius looked away and shook his head. “No. We’ve scanned the ruins with bio-sensitive auspex and residual heat augurs, but there’s nothing in there.”
“He could be dead.”
Pasanius shook his head. “You know him better than that.”
“I suppose I do,” agreed Uriel.
“In any case, I took a look into the Dragon’s Gullet. That tunneller machine the Iron Warriors came in is gone. Someone took it back through the rock, and it wasn’t any of us.”
Uriel nodded and said, “Get them ready to move, Pasanius. We need to finish this.”
“The war for Calth?”
“No, for Ultramar,” said Uriel.
Ignoring Pasanius’ quizzical look, he turned and walked over to Aethon Shaan. The captain of the Raven Guard knelt beside the corpse of Ardaric Vaanes. The renegade’s body was a mess, bloodied and crushed by his killer and the colossal forces unleashed by the collapse of the tomb. Yet for all the destruction wreaked upon him, there was something to the cast of his aquiline features that Uriel had never seen before.
Peace.
“I am sorry for the loss of your warriors,” said Uriel, placing a hand on Shaan’s shoulder.
Shaan nodded, but didn’t reply, and Uriel sensed the confusion in him.
“I hated Ardaric Vaanes,” said Shaan without looking up. “Every day I dreamed of seeing him brought back to face his crimes, but now that he’s dead I don’t feel anything. I… I feel sad. Why do I feel sad that a traitor’s dead?”
Uriel knelt beside the body and pressed his fingers into the blood-spattered raven tattooed on Vaanes’ shoulder.
“Because in the end I do not think he died a traitor,” said Uriel. “I think he was Astartes once again.”
“Is that even possible?”
“I think so,” said Uriel, looking into the face of a man who had once fought beside him across the face of a daemon world in search of redemption. “I hope so.”
“The Master of Shadows will demand to know what happened here,” said Shaan. “I don’t know what I’ll tell him when I return to the Ravenspire.”
“Tell him Vaanes gave his life in the eternal fight against the Ruinous Powers,” said Uriel.
“I think that I will, Uriel,” said Shaan, looking up as Apothecary Selenus approached, the mobile scalpels and vacuum seals of his reductor ready to receive that most precious resource of the Space Marines. Shaan nodded and placed a hand on Vaanes’ chest and recited the words spoken by Apothecaries down the centuries over the bodies of the fallen.
“He that is dead, take from him the Chapter’s due.”
THE BLOODBORN ARMY on Espandor did not long outlive the Corsair Queen. Without centralised leadership and bereft of the influence of the Thrice Born, the different factions within the Bloodborn fell to infighting. None would accept the leadership of any of the others, and with Corinth and Herapolis in Imperial hands, the Bloodborn were cut off from any re-supply. Under the inspirational leadership of Captain Sicarius, most of these isolated factions were surrounded and destroyed by strike elements of the 2nd Company. After the bloodbath of Corinth, these engagements were, by Adeptus Astartes standards, little more than skirmishes.
Within nine days, the Bloodborn threat on Espandor was defeated and Saul Gallow’s Defence Auxilia were deployed in mopping
up the last elements of resistance.
The Ultramarines regrouped and took their Thunderhawks back into orbit to board Valin’s Revenge. The strike cruiser had taken its fair share of damage, but like the Space Marines it carried within, it remained unbowed and unyielding.
Once aboard, Scipio Vorolanus rested with the rest of his surviving Thunderbolts and began the process of evaluating novitiates with a view to replacing his losses. Nivian now sported a fresh augmetic arm and Coltanis a wide scar that ran across his cheek and forehead. Helicas had come through the fighting largely unscathed and even Laenus had survived.
They had found him clinging to life amid the ruins of the anti-aircraft gun next to the mangled corpse of Bradua. Broken in body, but resolute in spirit, Laenus’ flesh was badly damaged, but the Apothecaries and Techmarines were even now rebuilding his body with flesh grafts and bionic replacements. Scipio didn’t think he’d mind too much.
Valin’s Revenge broke orbit and made best speed towards the coreward jump point.
Scipio asked Iulius Fennion their destination and was not surprised when his gruff-voiced friend told him where Sicarius was taking the company.
“Talassar,” said Iulius. “We’re going to Talassar.”
WAN LIGHT FILLED the chamber of the warp core, a pale, bleaching light that sapped the colour from everything it touched and rendered everything monochrome. The air tasted bad, though M’kar had no need to breathe. Ice formed on the edges of metal stanchions, though M’kar had no need of warmth. The waves of raw warp energy pouring into the Indomitable empowered it and filled its limbs with strength. Overhead lumens flickered and buzzed as the power supply surged and faded erratically. A mortal had once dared approach it to say that systems were failing all across the Indomitable without regular maintenance, bleating that that the star fort would soon become indefensible.
M’kar had eviscerated the fleshy servant for daring to approach it without first making the nine sacred obeisances of the Eternal Powers, feasting on its soul morsel without even noticing. The fear was a brief moment of pleasure, but the sheer vitality of the wars being waged across the battlefields of Ultramar was the most flavoursome sweetmeat.