His guard is therefore poor as he takes the second swing in the chest.
The wound is bloody. The force of it knocks Selaton down, and it looks as though he has the entire bite of the axe buried in his chest. In truth, his carapace has absorbed the lethal part of the hit, but the flesh is sliced and – until Selaton’s transhuman biology kicks in to staunch it – bleeds copiously.
Ventanus is too committed to protect his fallen sergeant. The Assault Marine with the power axe closes down for the finishing blow.
Greavus punches him in the side of the head with his power fist, compacting his helm like a foil ration tray.
Greavus hauls Selaton back to his feet. They struggle for a second to free the axe from Selaton’s armour.
Ventanus kills his opponent. Fury directs his hand. He plants his blade through the Word Bearer’s helmet, slicing off the right-hand third of it. Something that for all the galaxy resembles an anatomy scholam cross-section is visible as the Assault Marine sags aside.
Ventanus can feel the heat seething inside him like a fever. Since the fighting broke out, he’s taken about eighteen minor wounds, including a through and through las-hit to the meat of his right thigh, a fracture to a bone in his forearm, and a crushed fifth finger. The others are knocks, scars, and serious concussion-transmitted bruising.
His metabolism is cranking up, trying to compensate, trying to fight or delay pain, trying to maintain peak performance, trying to accelerate healing and repair. The energy debt has raised his body temperature by several degrees. He is flash-burning body fat fuel reserves. He knows he will soon need hydrolytes and additional pain-buffers if he is going to retain his battlefield edge.
He looks at the tank again. Why hasn’t it fired? Why–
The Baneblade abruptly revs its powerful engine plant, throbs jets of black exhaust into the air, and starts a rapid reverse. Ventanus can hear its track sections clattering. Its massive hull rocks tail-to-nose, and its main turret begins to traverse to the left, the battle cannon elevating.
The host of brotherhood warriors mobbing around it has to break frantically to avoid being crushed by its hasty redeployment.
What’s it doing? Is it turning? Is it turning?
There’s something in the oily fog. Something to the north-west.
The Word Bearers Baneblade fires its battle cannon. The muzzle-shock is huge, and the pressure smack puffs dust up from the ground all around it. The shell spits into the fog, creating a corkscrew ripple that slowly dissolves. Ventanus does not hear it hit.
But he hears the response.
There is an oscillating scream of energy and pressure, accompanied by a micro-pulse of electromagnetics. A thick beam of blinding energy shears out of the fog and strikes the Baneblade. The impact shakes the tank, all three hundred tonnes of it. It shakes it. It rattles it like a tin toy. It rocks it off the ground for a second and skids it sideways. Dozens of brotherhood warriors perish under its violently dislodged mass.
The energy beam bangs painfully as it connects. Huge chunks of armour plating eject, some spinning high into the air. Half the turret structure is burned away. Smoke begins to plume, and then gutters and pours up and out of the damaged section. The Baneblade shudders. Ventanus can hear it attempting to restart its main drive, stalled by the body-blow. He can hear the multi-fuel plant gagging and choking.
A second energy beam, bright as the first, scores out of the fog and misses the tank by a few metres. It hits the ground, spontaneously excavating a huge trench of superheated, fused rock, and incinerating two dozen of the brotherhood and four of the Word Bearers. Other cultists caught in the immediate target zones scream as the secondary heat-sear ignites their robes and their ammo.
The third beam, coming just a moment after the second, kills the Baneblade. It hits the hull square, under the throat of the turret, and the tank ruptures and explodes. For a millisecond, it resembles one of the wood-and-canvas vehicle dummies, little more than covered frame tents, are used in basic training exercises by the Army. It looks like a tank dummy where the wind has got up under the hem of the cover tarp and billowed it out off the underframe, lifting it, twisting the painted outline and edges.
Then the internal blast comes, sudden and bright, and hot and vast, and the twisted outline of the tank vanishes, atomised.
Two Shadowsword tanks plough out of the fog, roiling it around their cobalt-blue hulls.
Cobalt-blue. Cobalt-blue, wearing the white and gold heraldry of the Ultima.
Land Raiders and Rhinos churn through after them, then a trio of Whirlwinds, and a walking line of Ultramarines, forty bodies wide. They fire as they advance on the Word Bearers positions from the north, passing the smoking crater-grave of the Baneblade. Two or three bikes and speeders scoot after the massive battle tanks, romping over the churned-up ground.
The brotherhood formations at the head of the bridge baulk, under fire from a new angle. Hundreds are slaughtered where they stand. Some leap into the corpse-choked ditch to evade the hammering fire of Land Raiders. The Shadowswords are already firing into the fog, targeting high-value Word Bearers assets hidden from the palace by the haze. Their main guns screech out columns of energy that cook through the mist vapour. Objects in the blanket of fog explode. Flames gust high into the air over the mist cover. The smell in the air changes, like the turn from summer to autumn. New energies, new machines, new chemical interactions.
Full-scale battle is joined. For the first time since the attack on the palace began, the Word Bearers force is thrown into a defensive mode, prosecuted hard by an unexpected, mobile foe.
The cultist warriors break. Their chanting stops. Behind the first walking line of Ultramarines is a second, and a third. Their gold and blue armour is slightly dulled by the atmospheric conditions, but still it gleams. Salvation never looked so splendid. Death never looked so noble.
The cultists begin to flee. They run south down the earthwork, or flee into the mist. Those trying to follow the earthwork line, picking their way, scrambling, draw fire from the wall. Sparzi’s troopers and Arook’s skitarii lace them with opportunist weapons-fire, dropping them like sticks. Some turn back, and then turn back again, pinned and bracketed by gunfire that creeps in and slays them. Bodies slither and tumble into the death-pit of the ditch.
Ventanus sends an order to the colonel to suspend artillery. He wants to ensure the counter-strike has an unimpeded run into the enemy formation.
‘Captain Sydance,’ says Selaton, noting a standard and pointing.
‘The 4th,’ Ventanus agrees. He is surprised by the level of emotion he registers. It’s not just relief from the physical hazard. It’s honest pride of association. His company. His company.
It’s a heterogeneous mix, in all truth. Sydance has composed his battlelines out of men from several XIII Legion companies. All of them were assembled at the Erud muster. He’s patched holes and losses in the 4th Company structure with reinforcements from other broken units. One of the Shadowswords is an 8th Company asset, two of the Land Raiders are from 3rd. Ventanus notes the battle colours of Captain Lorchas, the second officer of the 9th.
The palace defenders watch whatever is visible. Most of the fighting boils back into the fog. Long-range armour duels rip through the cloudy murk. Nearer at hand, the Ultramarines finally dismember the last of the cult resistance, and engage in vicious close-quarter melee with the warriors of the XVII.
To their credit, the Word Bearers do not break like their chanting followers. They have significant numbers – a two- or three-company strength, by Ventanus’s estimate – and even caught out of position and by surprise, they dig in. From the savagery of Sydance’s assault, 4th Company and its reinforcing elements have seen too much already today to think about quarter. Ventanus wonders – dreads – what they might have witnessed and experienced out at Erud Station as the main part of the treachery broke. Did the Word Bearers encamped alongside the Ultramarines zones just turn? Did they simply rise and draw their weapons, and
begin killing, without notice or warning?
He is sure they did. Ventanus is sure the Word Bearers have nothing but the absolute extermination of the XIII as an objective.
You do not just kill the Ultramarines Legion.
Lorgar’s barbarians would not have risked a fair fight. They would have gathered every advantage that surprise, deceit and entrapment could offer. They would have wanted to blitz and kill their enemy, kill him before he even realised he was an enemy.
It did not work. It did not work. The XIII has been hurt. The last ten hours on Calth might even have mortally wounded the Legion to such an extent that it will never fully recover, and, as a consequence, will always be a weaker, smaller fighting force.
But the Word Bearers did not make the clean kill they intended. They fumbled it, or they underestimated the effort required. They made a bloody mess, and left a wounded foe that could still move and fight; a wounded, mangled foe that was fuelled by pain and hatred and vengeance, and by the bright shock of moral outrage.
Always make sure your enemy is dead.
If you must fight an Ultramarine, pray you kill him. If he is still alive, then you are dead.
You are dead, Lorgar. You are dead. You are dead.
‘Did you say something?’ Arook says to Ventanus.
Ventanus wonders if he did.
‘No,’ he replies. He unbuckles his helm, removes it, and wipes a smear of blood off the pitted, chipped visor. Much of the cobalt-blue paint has been scratched or spalled off. Arook Serotid, similarly, is covered in metal scrapes and dents, his ornate golden armour battered and streaked with blood and oil.
Around them, wounded, weary, filthy men gather to watch the brutal fighting on the far side of the earthwork. Army, Ultramarine and skitarii alike stand together, weapons lowered. Residue smoke coils under the chewed-up arch of the gate. Broken pieces of stone slither down from the wall, some of it jarred loose by the earth-trembling assault of the armoured vehicles. The precious few medical personnel among Ventanus’s force take advantage of the suspended fire to move up and tend the injured and dying. Virtually every single one of the palace defenders has taken an injury of some kind. There are nothing like enough dressings or drugs to go around.
‘Why the code?’ asks Arook.
‘What?’
‘The number of the painted eldar?’
‘The war against Jielthwa Craftworld,’ Ventanus replies quietly. ‘Eight years ago. Sydance had the main assault. A privilege. During the charge, he was briefly cut off and made a personal stand, taking on a dozen eldar warriors. It was an outstanding achievement. He was decorated for it. I arrived to relieve him just as the fight was ending, and he was finishing his last opponent.’
Ventanus glances at the skitarii master.
‘The primarch decorated him for twelve kills in one accelerated bout of combat. Twelve of the painted eldar. But there were thirteen eldar dead on the hall floor when I reached him. I came in firing, anxious for his welfare. It is a high probability that my shots, loosed into the smoke, killed the thirteenth. So it is a standing joke between us. He famously slew twelve and was decorated for it. I slew one. But that one may have been crucial. It might have been the one who, at last, overcame him. Sydance might have died at the hands of the thirteenth, and never lived to celebrate his glory and prowess. So which was more important, his twelve or my one?’
Arook stares at him.
‘This is the sort of thing you joke about?’ he asks. ‘This passes for humour among your kind?’
‘I thought you might understand,’ says Ventanus, shaking his head. ‘Most humans would not.’
Arook shrugs his mighty shoulders.
‘I suppose I do. We skitarii enjoy similar boasts and rivalries. We just do it in binary and keep it to ourselves.’
The force of the armour battle has become so intense the field of fog west of the palace is rippling and churning like a troubled sea. Fierce beams of light flash and burn in the murk. A troop transport, hoisted by a considerable explosion, bursts out of the mist like a breaching cetacean. Debris and fragments shower off its burning carcass as it flops back into the vapour sea.
Closer at hand, at the edges of the mist, Ultramarines are locked in hand-to-hand fighting with Word Bearers. Loyal blue against traitor red. No quarter given or taken.
Ventanus reloads his boltgun, checks his sword, and gathers up the standard. Its haft is streaked with runs of blood, and badged with bloody palm prints.
‘I’m rejoining the fight,’ he tells Selaton. ‘Secure the palace.’
He hears a buzz from beneath his left ear, and responds instinctively before he realises what it is.
‘Ventanus? This is Sullus.’
‘Sullus?’
‘I’m in the palace sub-basement, Remus. She did it. The server did it. Vox-link is live. Repeat, vox-link is back and live.’
Ventanus acknowledges. He turns to Selaton and the other officers.
‘Change of plan,’ he says. ‘I’m returning to the palace building. Hold the line, and let me know the moment the nature of the fight out there changes.’
He turns and begins to walk away, through the gate, across the cratered gardens, towards the battered facade of the summer palace.
Blue smoke wreathes the air, and there’s a stink of fycelene from the artillery emplacements.
He has hope. For the first time since the day began, Ventanus has decent, proper hope in his heart.
[mark: 10.40.21]
Ventanus enters the sub-basement. He can feel the soft heat of the working machines. Mechanicum magi stand around, observing, monitoring. A few work at exposed circuit integrators, making final adjustments.
Tawren stands in the stack room, connected to the chattering data-engine by an MIU umbilical. She looks serene.
She glances at him as he approaches, but is too busy reconfiguring a data-transfer structure in her head to speak.
Sullus glances at Ventanus.
‘4th Company just relieved us,’ Ventanus tells him.
‘So she said,’ Sullus replies, nodding towards the server. ‘She’s constructing a tactical overview. I don’t understand the details, but I gather she’s collecting and collating strategic data from every system and information source she can link to.’
‘Across the planet? Orbital?’ asks Ventanus.
‘Not yet, captain,’ says Cyramica, the server’s aide. ‘For now, it is just on a local, continental level. Because it was dormant and isolated, the data-engine was not infected with pernicious scrapcode. The server is extending her reach one step at a time, maintaining code-protected cordons, so that she does not contaminate herself by infected data-transfer. There is also some doubt that this engine will be powerful enough to coordinate a full, global noosphere.’
Ventanus nods. He appreciates the way the Mechanicum have of never sugar-coating any news.
‘What about taking control of the planetary weapons grid?’ asks Sullus.
‘No,’ replies Cyramica bluntly. ‘The active grid is under enemy control, and it is infected with their invasive scrapcode. All the server can do is gather data in passive mode. The engine is not powerful enough to wrest grid control from the enemy-operated data-engines, and even if it were, such a process would require active MIU function, which would allow the scrapcode a viable cross-infection route. As was demonstrated today, we do not have a code-protection cordon or “killcode” powerful enough to eliminate and cleanse the scrapcode.’
‘So Tawren’s forced to remain passive?’ asks Ventanus.
‘To protect the integrity of what we have here,’ says Cyramica.
‘But she can assemble and compile tactical data for us?’
‘Extensively. Her magi are already assembling the first databriefs.’
Ventanus looks at Sullus. ‘She can prep us with material to formulate proper theoreticals. We can then use the vox to coordinate the practicals.’
‘Any coordinated reprisal is going to be bloody welcome,??
? says Sydance, walking into the chamber. He wrenches off his blood-stained helm and grins at Ventanus. ‘Thought you were dead, Remus,’ he says.
‘Hoped you might be,’ Ventanus replies.
‘Hope all you like,’ says Sydance.
They embrace with a clatter of armour.
‘There’s always a thirteenth eldar, Lyros,’ says Ventanus.
‘Twelve, only ever twelve,’ Sydance replies.
He breaks the bearhug and grins at Sullus.
‘Good to see you standing, Teus,’ he says.
‘We march for Macragge,’ Sullus replies stiffly.
‘You march where the hell you like,’ says Sydance. ‘I’m marching straight for Lorgar’s throat today. I’ve seen...’
He hesitates, and wrinkles his mouth in distaste.
‘Men are dead and gone, brothers,’ he says quietly, his smile behind a cloud. ‘I’ll spare you the list for now, but so many. Friends, warriors, heroes. The catalogue of the fallen will make you weep. Weep. The bastards slaughtered us. Unguarded. In our sleep. Surprise attack is an honourable tradition of war, but not from a supposed friend. Ah, I’m sure you saw plenty on your way from the port, Remus.’
‘I did.’
‘I will make an ocean of blood,’ says Sydance. ‘An ocean. I will soak the soil in the blood of these bastards. I will bleed them beyond the limits of their clotting factor. I will leave their heads on spikes.’
‘Vengeance, yes,’ Sullus nods. ‘Quite. We should however formulate a solid theoretical.’
‘Screw theoreticals!’ Sydance growls. ‘This is one occasion when we are excused our usual approach to war as a science. This is war as art. This is war as emotion.’
‘Yes,’ says Sullus. ‘Let us paint our faces and charge the enemy guns. They only outnumber us four-fold, after all. The few of us that remain will die, but at least we’ll have died expressing our anger. So that makes it all right.’
Sydance makes a contemptuous sound.
‘I’m with Sydance,’ says Ventanus, but quickly raises a warning finger before Sullus can object. ‘With one caveat. Given our losses, given our enemy’s numerical and technical superiority, I think our spirit, our rage for vengeance, our furious need for restitution... those things may be the only qualities that give us an advantage. They have made the mistake of hurting us instead of killing us. We are more dangerous. We will use the hurt.’