That’s why they have the heavy support and the watcher.
It’s not death that Teth fears. They’re Kaul Mandori. They are immortal. This is the promise that has been made to them, the vow they have accepted. This is the promise that lured him from his life in the Army and made him join the brotherhood. Immortality for service: it seemed, to Vil Teth, a fair exchange.
It’s not the death he fears. But he’s seen enough action in his career to know that he’d prefer to avoid the pain.
Zorator’s presence in the area is spooking the enemy from cover. Teth rises sharply as three men break into the open ahead, and begin to flee across the field of smouldering rubble. They are non-heterosic humans, which relieves him. They are wearing the livery uniforms of the cargo handling guild. They are unarmed.
Teth raises his rifle, takes aim, and shoots the first of them. A seventy-five metre shot at a moving target. Back of the legs, as he intended. Not bad. The man falls, wailing in pain. Alive. Alive is good. As well as clearing the zone, his strike team has been told to forage for food.
Around him, the Kaul Mandori raise their weapons and take aim. Two make shots that miss the fleeing pair, and skim the dusty rubble. Garel, Teth’s second, squeezes a las-bolt off and clips one of the targets. The man topples, headshot. Dead is good too.
Teth laughs. Garel laughs back, white teeth in a dust-caked face.
There’s another shot. It’s not a las. It’s a gut-deep boom. Bolter. Garel explodes. There’s meat and black blood everywhere in a splatter pattern, covering them all, dark gore and liquidised tissue coating the dust that’s coating them. Teth flinches as he is hit by a whizzing chunk of Garel’s spine. He blinks blood out of his eyes. He sees teeth on the ground, teeth embedded in a chunk of jaw, teeth that just that second were grinning at him.
Teth’s men are scattering. He yells an order.
‘Support! Support!’
There’s a fugging Ultramarine coming at them. Coming out of cover. Coming like a blue blur. The bastard’s huge.
They open fire. Five lasrifles find the giant, clip him with zagging neon las-bolts. The impacts chip his dusty blue armour. They check him, but they don’t stop him. He’s got a fugging sword in one hand, and a battered golden standard in the other.
He puts the sword through Forb, clean fugging through, and then carves Grocus. Grocus rotates as the sword catches him. He spins like a dancer pirouetting, twirling blood like an out-flung cape, then falls.
The Ultramarine kills Sorc, then Teth’s world turns upside down as he gets knocked flat. The Ultramarine isn’t stopping. He’s going for the heavy support. He knows that’s the real threat.
Teth rolls over, spitting out blood, dust and the part of his tongue he bit off when the Ultramarine smashed into him.
‘Kill him! Kill him!’
The support unit’s coming up. The men are firing, some kneeling to steady their shots. The Ultramarine’s running right at them. He’s brandishing the fugging standard pole. Idiot. Autocannon’s going to fug him up.
The speeder spurs forward. Why the fug isn’t it firing?
Teth realises how clever the Ultramarine has been. That’s why he came through them, head on. He wants to take the speeder. If the speeder opens up at him, Teth and the others are in its field of fire.
You idiots, Teth thinks. You idiots. What the fug’s the universe going to look like with you ruling it? I don’t matter? I’m fugging immortal! Gene-named! Remember? We’re gene-kin! They’ve taken our blood. They’ll bring us back. That’s what the Word Bearers promised us if we served them. If we die for them, they bring us back. they can do that. They have gene-tech.
Forget me! Fugging shoot the bastard!
The speeder kicks forward to meet the bounding Ultramarine. The fugger’s so fast. Something that big and heavy ought not to be able to move that f–
Teth realises something.
Garel got ruined by a bolter, but the Ultramarine hasn’t got a bolter. He hasn’t got a bolter, so–
The second giant in cobalt blue shows himself. He has got a bolter.
He comes off the roof of a fab-shop twenty metres back. A running jump off a six-metre drop. Transhuman muscle puts some real distance on that. His feet stride out as he sails down. He was waiting until the speeder passed under him. He was waiting for it to come to meet his partner.
The newcomer bangs down on the lid of the speeder, both feet planted, denting the roof panel. The landing is as loud as a bolter round hitting. The speeder bounces on its grav-field, soaking the impact.
The newcomer, feet braced, bends over and fires his boltgun through the roof. Thud. Thud. Two shots. Two kills.
The first Ultramarine reaches him, running head-on into the support squad’s frantic small-arms fire. Teth sees point-blank las shot flecking clean off his armour. More sword work. Arterial blood hoses the side of the speeder. The Ultramarine swings the standard like a club, spading one of the Kaul clean out of his boots.
The second Ultramarine jumps off the speeder’s roof and joins the melee. He’s put the bolter up. Saving ammo. He’s laying in with his combat blade. Eight of the twelve are dead in fewer seconds.
Teth shouts. He shouts so hard he feels like he’s going to turn his lungs inside out.
Ventanus hears the yell. He turns. The battered golden standard in his hands is dripping blood.
‘What did you bring that for?’ Selaton growls, withdrawing his blade from his last kill.
Ventanus isn’t listening. Some of the enemy foot troops are still alive. The leader is yelling.
‘We should shut him up,’ says Selaton. He’s opened the side hatch of the speeder, and is dragging an exploded body out. The cabin interior is painted with blood. He needs to find the levers to adjust the seats.
The Word Bearer appears. Cataphractii. Terminator.
‘Zorator! My watcher! Kill them!’ Teth shrieks.
The Terminator is massive. The enhanced armour, cumbersome, is also as solid as a tank. The lorica segmentata of the huge shoulder plates rise up above the crested helm. The bulky gorget is part snarling mouth, part cage. Studded leather pteruges and mail skirts protect the weaker joints. He looks like a Titan engine: the vast shoulders and upper body, the stocky legs.
Lightning crackles around his left-hand claw. He starts to fire his giant combi-bolter.
Mass-reactive shells rip up the concourse. They explode and kill two of the Kaul Mandori that Ventanus had subdued but not slain. They knock Ventanus off his feet, driving armour splinters into his shin and thigh, and rip a considerable bite out of the speeder’s nose plating.
Selaton throws himself down in rolling cover, using the speeder as a block. He tries to return fire. His aim is good, but the cataphractii soaks up his rounds. Flames from the mass-reactive impacts gout around the reinforced carapace.
The Word Bearer heavy fires at Selaton. The speeder takes more serious damage, including a bolt that scalps the crew bay, peeling the metal skin of the cabin roof up like the tongue of a shoe.
Ventanus is hurt. His leg is punctured. The bleeding’s already stopped. He churns to his feet. He’s got the speed the hulking Terminator lacks. It’s a blood-red beast, maned with crimson horsehair. He rushes it.
It swings its aim back to him. Ventanus is transhuman fast, but he can’t outrun shells of a combi-bolter, and his armour won’t stop them either.
There’s a ping of tearing metal, of bolts popping. It’s the sound Selaton makes as he wrenches the speeder’s autocannon off its mount. He’s standing on the speeder, half inside the cab, one foot on the seats, one braced on the nose plate, the cabin roof peeled back as if to reveal him like a theatrical surprise. He’s got the multi-barrelled cannon wedged against his hip, the metal snake of the munition feeder coiling back, fat and heavy, into the crew bay.
He fires. The heavy weapon makes a grinding metal noise like bells being crushed through some kind of mill. A jumping lick of burning gases flickers around the rotating barrels.
r />
The storm of shots brackets the cataphractii and rips across him. Fragments of metal flake off his armour in a puff of abraded smoke. Rubble on either side of him explodes. Pieces of the gorget and visor fly off, along with scraps of leather pteruges, shreds of horsehair, and broken mail rings. The shots penetrate in four places, allowing blood to glug out of the bare metal craters.
The Terminator stays upright for a long time, staggering backwards under the hail of fire. Finally, he goes down on his back with a crash.
Ventanus stands over him. Smoke, blue and pungent, streaks the air. The Word Bearer, gurgling the blood that is filling his helmet and throat brace, stirs. He’s dying, but he’s a long way from dead. He starts lifting the oil-black combi-bolter.
Ventanus brings the blade of the standard shaft down through the visor slot with both hands, driving it and turning it and screwing it, until it meets the inside back of the armoured helmet. Blood wells out over the eye slits and gorget lip, and runs down the sides of the helmet to mat the horsehair broom of the crest.
Ventanus steps back, leaving the standard planted there, crooked. Selaton approaches.
‘We must move,’ he says.
‘Is the speeder functional?’
‘Just about.’
Ventanus pulls out the standard and carries it towards the shot-up vehicle.
‘That’s why,’ he says.
‘What?’ asks Selaton.
‘That’s why I brought this,’ Ventanus replies, raising the bloody standard. ‘Precisely for things like that.’
[mark: 01.57.42]
‘What does it mean?’ asks Marius Gage.
‘It means…’ Guilliman begins. He takes the data-slate back, ponders it. ‘It means a precondition of malice.’
He looks out of the flagship’s vast crystalflex ports at the bombarded planet below.
‘Not that it‘s really in any doubt,’ he adds. ‘If this started as an accident or mistake, then it has truly passed beyond any limit of forgiveness. It is, however, salutary to know that my brother’s crime is entirely proven.’
Guilliman summons the Master of Vox with a quick gesture.
‘Rescind my previous looped broadcast,’ he says, taking the speaker horn. ‘Replace it with this.’
He hesitates, thinking, and then lifts his head and speaks cleanly and quickly into the device.
‘Lorgar of Colchis. You may consider the following. One: I entirely withdraw my previous offer of solemn ceasefire. It is cancelled, and will not be made again, to you or to any other of your motherless bastards. Two, you are no longer any brother of mine. I will find you, I will kill you, and I will hurl your toxic corpse into hell’s mouth.’
He hands the horn back to the vox-officer.
‘Put that on repeat immediately,’ he says.
Guilliman ushers Gage, Shipmaster Zedoff and a group of other senior executives towards the strategium.
‘In the absence of vox, we will need to use direct link laser comms and sealed orders physically carried by fast lighters to coordinate the fleet,’ he begins. ‘I have sketched a hasty tactical plan. Specific ship orders must be communicated to each master and captain by the most expedient means available. Within the hour – the hour, you understand – I want this fleet operating to purpose. We will deny that bombardment.’
‘That is our objective?’ asks Zedoff.
‘No,’ Guilliman admits. ‘I am going to put that trust in the Mlatus and the Solonim Woe. They will lead the formations against the planetary attack. Our specific objective will be the Fidelitas Lex.’
Zedoff raises his eyebrows.
‘A personal score, then,’ he says.
Guilliman doesn’t try to hide it.
‘I will kill him. I will literally kill him. With my bare hands.’
He looks at Gage.
‘Don’t say anything, Marius,’ he says. ‘You’ll be transferring to the Mlatus to lead the attack. With a sober head and a proper plan. I know that going after the enemy flag has serious demerits, tactically. I don’t care. This is the one battle of my career I’m going to fight with my heart rather than my head. The bastard will die. The bastard.’
‘I was merely going to object to being absent at the moment you kill him,’ says Gage.
‘My primarch!’
They turn. The Master of Vox is pale.
‘Lithocast, sir. Long-range signal from the Fidelitas Lex.’
Guilliman nods.
‘So he ignores my plea for ceasefire, but I tell him to go and screw himself and he makes contact immediately. Put it on.’
‘My primarch, I–’ Gage begins.
Guilliman pushes past him, heading for the lithocaster plate.
‘There is no way you will stop me having this conversation, Marius,’ he says.
Guilliman steps onto the hololithic platform. Light bends and bubbles in front of him. Images form and fade, re-form and decay, like scratches of light on film. Then Lorgar is standing there, life-size, facing Guilliman. His face is in shadow again, but the light construction makes him look utterly real. Other shapes crowd around him, sections and fragments of shadow, no longer recognisable as his minions and lieutenants.
‘Have you lost your temper, Roboute?’ Lorgar asks. They can hear the smile.
‘I am going to gut you,’ Guilliman replies softly.
‘You have lost your temper. The great and calm and level-headed Roboute Guilliman has finally succumbed to passion.’
‘I will gut you. I will skin you. I will behead you.’
‘Ah, Roboute,’ Lorgar murmurs. ‘Here, at the very end, I finally hear you talk in a way that actually makes me like you.’
‘Precondition of malice,’ says Guilliman, barely a whisper. ‘You took the Campanile. By my estimation, you took it at least a hundred and forty hours ago. You took the ship, and you staged this. You organised this atrocity, Lorgar, and you made it seem like a terrible accident so you could capitalise on our mercy. You made us stay our hand while you committed murder.’
‘It’s called treachery, Roboute. It works very well. How did you find out?’
‘We back-plotted the Campanile’s route once we’d worked out what had hit the yards. When you look at the plot, the notion that it was any kind of accident becomes laughable.’
‘As is the notion you can hurt me.’
‘We’re not going to debate it, you maggot, you treacherous bastard,’ says Guilliman. ‘I just wanted you to know that I will rip your living heart out. And I want to know why. Why? Why? If this is our puerile old feud, boiled to the surface, then you are the most pathetic soul in the cosmos. Pathetic. Our father should have left you out in the snow at birth. He should have fed you to Russ. You worm. You maggot.’
Lorgar raises his face slightly so that Guilliman can see a hint of his smile in the shadows of his face.
‘This has nothing to do with our enmity, Roboute… Except that it affords me the opportunity to avenge my honour on you and your ridiculous toy soldiers. That is just a delicious bonus. No, this is the Ushkul Thu. Calth is the Ushkul Thu. The offering. It is the sunrise of the new galaxy. A new order.’
‘You’re rambling, you bastard.’
‘The galaxy is changing, Roboute. It is turning upside down. Up will be down, and down will be up. Our father will be tossed out of his throne. He will fall down, and no one will put him back together again.’
‘Lorgar, you–’
‘Listen to me, Roboute. You think you’re so clever. So wise. So informed. But this has started already. It’s already under way. The galaxy is turning on its head. You will die, and our father will die, and so will all the others, because you are all too stupid to see the truth.’
Guilliman steps towards the lithocast phantom, as though he might strike it down or snap its neck.
‘Listen to me, Roboute,’ the light ghost hisses. ‘Listen to me. The Imperium is finished. It is falling. It is going to burn. Our father is done. His malicious dreams are over. Horus is r
ising.’
‘Horus?’
‘Horus Lupercal is rising, Roboute. You have no idea of his ability. He is above us all. We stand with him, or we perish entirely.’
‘You shit, Lorgar. Are you drugged? Are you mad? What kind of insanity is–’
‘Horus!’
‘Horus what?’
‘He’s rising! He’s coming! He will kill anyone who stands in his way! He will rule! He will be what the Emperor could never be!’
‘Horus would–’ Guilliman clears his throat. He swallows. He is dazed by the sheer extent of Lorgar’s dementia. ‘Horus would never turn. If any of us turned, the others would–’
‘Horus has risen against our cruel and abusive parent, Roboute,’ says Lorgar. ‘Accept that, and you will die with greater peace in your heart. Horus Lupercal has come to overthrow the Imperial corruption and punish the abuser. It is already happening. And Horus is not alone. I am with him, sworn and true. So is Fulgrim. Angron. Perturabo. Magnus. Mortarion. Curze. Alpharius. Your loyalty is air and paper, Roboute. Our loyalty is blood.’
‘You’re lying!’
‘You’re dying. Isstvan V burns. Brothers are dead already.’
‘Dead? Who are–’
‘Ferrus Manus. Corax. Vulkan. All dead and gone. Slaughtered like pigs.’
‘These are all lies!’
‘Look at me, Roboute. You know they are not. You know it. You have studied every one of us. You know our strengths and our failings. Theoretical, Roboute! Theoretical! You know this is possible. You know from the very facts that this is a possible outcome.’
Guilliman steps back. He opens his mouth, but he is too stunned to reply.
‘Whatever you think of me, Roboute,’ says Lorgar, ‘whatever your opinion, and I know it is about as low as it can be, you know I’m not a stupid man. I would betray my brother and attack the assembled might of the XIII Legion… for a grudge? Really? Really? Practical, Roboute! I am here to exterminate you and the Ultramarines because you are the only force left in the Emperor’s camp that can possibly stop Horus. You are too dangerous to live, and I am here to make sure you do not.’