And then he is killing them.
‘With him! With him!’ Thiel yells. They surge forward. Mangled Word Bearers fly overhead, or crash into the decks around them. When Thiel reaches his primarch’s side, Guilliman has slain a dozen at least. His boltgun is roaring. His power fist crackles with cooking blood.
It is brutal close quarters. Thiel has the exotic long-sword that has served him so well on this darkest of days. Two-handed, he wields it, cutting crimson ceramite like silk. Word Bearers blood looks black, as if it is sour and polluted. Thiel flanks his primarch, advancing steadily with the press of the assault towards the primary hatch.
They lose eight men. Eight Ultramarines. But they break through into the master control room leaving a carpet of enemy dead in their wake.
The real fight awaits them there.
A stunning barrage of bolter-fire greets them, killing Stetius, killing Ascretis, killing Heutonicus.
Kor Phaeron, master of the dark faith, master of the unspeakable word, orders his men forward.
Then he flies at Guilliman, trailing dark vapour, coruscating with black energies torn from the pits of the warp.
‘Bastard!’ Guilliman howls.
He does not flinch.
Not for a second.
[mark: 20.06.23]
The guildhall shakes. Titans are firing at it.
‘I need an update,’ Ventanus yells into the vox as blizzards of glass and masonry swirl around him.
He’s stayed on the surface to command the repulse. Selaton has ridden down into the armoured bunker with Tawren. All data and vox-links from Leptius Numinus shut down about five minutes ago. The palace has fallen. The only feed Ventanus has is close-range comms with his company.
‘The server has activated the engine,’ Selaton voxes back. ‘She is connecting. Connecting to the MIU.’
‘Is it working?’ Ventanus demands.
‘I don’t know what it looks like if it is working,’ Selaton replies.
‘I can guarantee it looks better than this!’ Ventanus responds.
Armour loyal to the Word Bearers is pushing relentlessly along the transit, covering their positions with a hail of shells and bulk las. Smoke and rain have cut visibility to almost nothing. Fabricatory buildings on the far side of the road have collapsed in welters of flame and stone. Two Reaver Titans, weapons mounts glowing from relentless discharge, are approaching through the smoke at full stride.
Cyramica is dead. Lorchas is dead. Sparzi is probably dead too. Ventanus can’t find Greavus or Sydance. The company line is broken. The 4th has done all it can.
It cannot match the overwhelming strength of Hol Beloth’s offensive.
‘The server has launched the killcode,’ Selaton reports. ‘She is launching it into the grid system. She is preparing for a purge.’
Ventanus ducks as Titan fire hurls a Land Raider into the air a few dozen metres ahead of him. It lands, burning, buckled, hitting the torn ground so loudly it sounds as though the sky is caving in.
The sky is caving in, of course. Blue-white fire crackles above the rain. Solar flares are searing Calth’s upper atmosphere, irradiating the stricken world, triggering massive, unnatural aurora displays as energetic charged particles strike the thermosphere. Light and colour jump and twist around Ventanus: light from the explosions, light from the agonised sky.
‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ Ventanus voxes back. ‘That’s good?’
‘Yes, captain,’ Selaton responds, ‘but it’s useless without control. She can’t take control of the grid until enemy control is taken away. And that hasn’t happened. She is telling me that hasn’t happened.’
A Gal Vorbak beast looms at Ventanus through the murk, swinging a power axe. He wears no helmet. His face is... not human.
Ventanus meets the charge and plants his blade across the haft of the axe, blocking the swing. They struggle. Ventanus is forced back by the killer’s bruising power. The locked weapons break apart, and Ventanus ducks hard to avoid the scything chop that follows.
Ventanus recovers quickly, ramming his blade upwards. His sword-tip glances off the Gal Vorbak’s axe, deflects into the enemy’s mouth, and skewers his head.
The Gal Vorbak doesn’t die. Not fast enough. He laughs around the blade impaling his mouth. Black blood pumps out over the sword hilt and Ventanus’s hand and arm. The Gal Vorbak puts his axe deep into Ventanus’s side.
Then he obliges, and dies.
Ventanus sinks to one knee.
‘A-anything?’ he voxes.
‘Captain? Are you all right?’ Selaton replies.
‘Is there anything yet?’
‘Your voice sounds strange.’
‘Selaton, has she got it yet?’ Ventanus growls.
‘No, sir. Enemy control is still in place.’
The Titans are close now. The last Shadowsword remaining with the 4th fires and damages one of the striding giants, but they reply together and turn the super-heavy tank into a vast conflagration that levels the city blocks behind it.
Nothing else is coming. None of the support that they hoped might arrive to stand with them. None of the reinforcements.
Their hope was a good hope, but it was not strong enough.
The XVII Legion has won the Battle of Calth.
[mark: 20.09.41]
The Satric Plateau is bathed in aurora light. The local star spews energy across the entire Veridian System.
Erebus watches.
Rain is falling. The rain is blood. The daemons scream.
The storm breaks.
[mark: 20.10.04]
Kor Phaeron greets Guilliman with a beam of smoke-light, a column of wretched darkness that bursts from the palm of his right hand and smashes the XIII primarch into the chamber wall.
Guilliman gets back up, but he is shaken. The wall is crumpled where he struck it.
Kor Phaeron cries out, a bark of straining effort, and manufactures another ray of smoke-light. Guilliman is charging, but the beam slams him back into the bulkhead with a kinetic slap so powerful that it rings out with a deafening sonic boom.
Guilliman staggers up, falls, and then half rises, clenching his power fist. The ceramite of his breastplate is cracked. Guilliman coughs, and blood drips from his mouth. He tries to stand.
Kor Phaeron blasts him again, this time with a weird, negative electricity that crackles around Guilliman and causes him to seize in violent spasms.
Guilliman is left on his hands and knees, his cobalt-blue plating scorched, his head bowed, his whole form smouldering as the superheated armour burns his skin.
The Word Bearer draws his athame and steps forward.
Kor Phaeron can see a choice, and it delights him. He can end the life of the great Guilliman. A personal kill is so much more valuable than a distant or mass killing.
With his own hand, he can murder Roboute Guilliman.
Or, with his own hand, he can turn him.
Just as the Warmaster was turned.
Erebus did it. So Kor Phaeron can do it.
Guilliman is hurt, weak, vulnerable. The bite of the athame will free Guilliman’s sanity while he is in such a state, slice away his inhibitions. The painful burn of the athame wound will fester in him, and ultimately, through the lens of delirium, reveal the Primordial Truth in all its hellish glory.
They came to Calth to kill Guilliman and his perfect warriors. How much more will it mean to return to the court of Lorgar and Horus Lupercal with Guilliman as a willing and pliant ally?
Guilliman, crowned with horns. Guilliman, invested in the iridescent cloak of daemonhood.
Kor Phaeron stoops beside the crumpled primarch. Guilliman’s breathing is fast and ragged. His armour smokes, discoloured, and his blood pools beneath him.
‘There is so much you don’t understand,’ says Kor Phaeron. ‘The truth will shock you, Roboute. I’m sorry, it will. But you will learn to accommodate it. I’m happy to share my knowledge with you. To help you understand. To grow in appreciation.’
‘Get away from me,’ Guilliman gasps.
‘Too late. Embrace this.’
Thiel is too far away to stop it. Locked in the unyielding fight raging on the opposite side of the control chamber, Thiel glimpses what he knows is likely to be the final few seconds of Roboute Guilliman’s life.
He tries to break through, screaming out his rage and frustration. The Word Bearers have driven Guilliman’s kill squad back, slaying most of them. Thiel and the others fight to reach their primarch’s side, but they cannot. There are too many of the enemy. And these are the enemy elite.
Three warriors obstruct Aeonid Thiel. One is Sorot Tchure. Tchure blocks every strike and thrust Thiel makes, as surely as a practice cage set on maximum extremity level.
Kor Phaeron puts the blade of the athame to Guilliman’s throat.
4
[mark: 20.11.39]
The upper storeys of the guildhall collapse. Ventanus finds Sydance, Greavus and the remnants of their squads, and backs across the outer concourse. The severity of his wound is making him shuffle, his gait uneven.
The enemy is all around them. Two more Titans have just loomed out of vapour to the east. Two more. It is laughable. It is academic. The enemy strength has long since passed the tipping point. Hol Beloth has employed maximum overkill.
At least, Ventanus considers, they have taken a lot of them down. A lot of them. The Word Bearers have had to pay dearly to reach the end of this world.
Sadly, they do not seem to care.
The guildhall will fall next, and no matter how well-armoured the bunker in the sub-levels is, the XVII will dig it out, kill Tawren, and smash the data-engine.
One of the Titans opens fire.
Another of the Titans explodes from the waist up. A giant fireball bellies out from its upper section, consuming it, swirling yellow and white flames into the sky.
Three hundred metres below the guildhall, the bunker trembles. The noise of the terminal war overhead is a dull grumble, a vibration masked by the whirr and rattle of the powerful data-engine.
Tawren, connected in machine communion by the MIU, frowns.
Selaton sees her expression change. The Ultramarine has never experienced such exasperation. He is absent from the fight, useless, destined to do nothing except monitor and report on the silent haptic operations of an inscrutable Mechanicum magos.
‘What?’ he asks. ‘What is it?’
‘Two Titans have vectored into the fight,’ she says quietly, scanning streams of moving data invisible to him. ‘The Titans that have just appeared are not traitor machines.’
‘What?’
‘They are loyalist instruments,’ she says. ‘The Burning Cloud and Kaskardus Killstroke. One has just made an engine-kill against the Word Bearers-aligned Titan Mortis Maxor.’
‘We are supported?’ Selaton asks.
‘It seems–’
‘Server, are you telling me that reinforcement forces are arriving to supplement the 4th?’
‘Yes, sergeant, I am. The data supports this supposition. According to the data, that is the case.’
Tawren remains entirely calm. She seems to show no relief. She studies the rapidly updating datastream, winnowing out its information.
‘Captain Ventanus’s force was facing an annihilation projection of three minutes and sixteen seconds. That limit is being revised up to six minutes and twelve seconds. To eight min... to ten minutes and fifty-one seconds.’
Tawren watches the datafeed. It streams from a thousand different picture and data sources: the visor capture of the Ultramarines legionaries, the optic feeds of the skitarii, the auspexes of loyalist vehicles, the guildhall zone sensors, the parts of the city cogitation network still operating. She watches events unfold.
The reinforcement strength explodes into the Lanshear Belt from the east, fast and mobile. It comes along Tarxis Traverse, Malonik Transit, Bedrus Oblique and the Lanshear Arterials. It pushes through the conurb structures behind the cargo depots and the ring of habitats to the east of Port Dock 18. A column of Land Raiders and armour support three Titans: two Reavers and a Warlord. An infantry force follows, moving rapidly. She identifies them by insignia, heraldry, trace codes and unit marker transponders. The force is mostly XIII and Mechanicum elements from Barrtor and the Sharud muster, but there are twenty thousand Army troopers too, bringing lighter armour and support weapons.
She switches rapidly between pict-supporting feed views to track the advance. The relief force forms two prongs of assault. One is a Legion force led by a sergeant of the 112th called Anchise, and a captain of the 19th called Aethon. The other is predominantly Army, and is commanded by a colonel of the Neride 41st called Bartol, but it is physically being led by Eikos Lamiad and a lumbering Ultramarines Dreadnought.
Before she was lost, Tawren’s loyal junior Uldort fulfilled her duties with extraordinary diligence, and coordinated all the force and firepower she could contact.
Lamiad. Eikos Lamiad, Tetrarch of Ultramar, Primarch’s Champion. He leads a ragged host of soldiery collected from the desert and the burning hills around the Holophusikon. He raises his sword in his one good arm and sweeps his warriors into the street fight.
Telemechrus, the Contemptor, strides beside him, expending ammunition as he drives a wedge into the enemy formations. His munitions tally records two kills among Hol Beloth’s senior commanders. Assault cannon. Most efficient.
Tawren switches views again. She follows other code tags.
Justarius, the venerable, walks with Aethon’s squads. A second Dreadnought brought to the fight. And in the shadow of the Titans, a second tetrarch too: Tauro Nicodemus, who has spent the day fighting up from the south and the slaughterfields at Komesh.
Switch view. Switch view. Tawren watches the data, almost startled by the speed of update, the rapid turn of the battle’s balance.
She finally becomes aware of Selaton’s desperation, and starts to tell him what she can see.
Hol Beloth’s forces flinch at the unbridled force of the attack. It is not just the firepower, it is the coordinated strength of it. The shattered survivors of the XIII should not have been able to organise with such precision and effect. In the midst of chaos, confusion, a world ablaze, they should not have been able to rally and focus around such a strategically specific point.
Tawren checks her annihilation projection.
It now stands at forty-seven minutes and thirty-one seconds.
In that time, the assembled survivors of the Calth Atrocity will express their fury and their vengeance, and they will do massive damage to the enemy. They may even temporarily drive the Word Bearers back out of the Lanshear Belt.
But it is only a last, gratifying chance to rage into the face of death.
For Hol Beloth, it will simply add an hour or two to the fight. In many ways, it serves to concentrate his victims in one convenient killing ground. He can draw in supporting divisions from all directions.
The XIII cannot.
If they hoped to fall in glory, they are about to get their wish.
Tawren has no grid control with which to shift the combat dynamic. She has the killcode, but no damned control.
[mark: 20.13.29]
The athame bites. Guilliman’s blood wells up around the sliced flesh. He grunts through clenched teeth.
‘Let it go,’ whispers Kor Phaeron. ‘This is the beginning of wisdom.’
Guilliman mutters something in reply.
‘What?’ asks Kor Phaeron, cupping a hand to his ear, mocking him. ‘What did you say, Roboute?’
Every single word is an effort.
‘You made an error,’ Guilliman gasps.
‘An error?’
‘You chose the wrong practical. You had a choice. Toy with me. Kill me. You chose the wrong one.’
‘Really?’ smiles Kor Phaeron.
‘You should not have let me live.’
‘I let you live so I could share the truth, Roboute.’
‘Yes,’ says Guilliman,
sucking in each ragged breath. ‘But all the while I’m alive, I can do this.’
There is a sharp sound. A sudden, wet crack. An explosive spray of blood, as though a skin of red wine has burst between them. Kor Phaeron makes a tiny noise; a thin, ceramic sound like a wet finger sliding down glass.
Guilliman rises. Though its power has long since shorted out and failed, he has buried his armour claw in Kor Phaeron’s chest. He has crunched through plate, through muscle, through augmented ribs. Kor Phaeron twitches, impaled on Guilliman’s fist. His feet are off the deck, his elbows digging into his sides. He shudders, head flopping on his neck.
The athame falls from his fingers and rebounds off the deck.
Sorot Tchure hears the noise his master makes. He is focused on his combat with the Ultramarines raiders, but he cannot help but turn his eyes for a second. Less than a second. A microsecond.
Thiel sees his opening. His practical. It is infinitesimal, a tiny chink in the Word Bearer’s guard. It lasts a microsecond, and it will not be repeated.
He puts his sword through it.
The longsword shears the right side of Tchure’s helm away. Cheek, ear and part of the skull separate with it. Tchure stumbles, bewildered by the pain, the shock, the disorientation.
For a moment, Tchure thinks it is Luciel. He thinks it is Luciel who has risen up to punish him for a trust so miserably betrayed.
Thiel shoulder-slams him aside into one of the other Word Bearers, spattering blood over them all. He ducks the sword slash of the third, and decapitates him.
He is the first to break clear and rush to Guilliman’s side.
Guilliman looks Kor Phaeron in the eyes. Kor Phaeron’s lips quiver. He blinks hard and bubbles of saliva form around the corners of his trembling mouth.
Guilliman wrenches the claw out. It is clutching Kor Phaeron’s heart.
Kor Phaeron crashes to the deck, bitter black blood coursing from under him in all directions. He retches, and covers the floor with a vile lactic spatter.
Guilliman throws the mangled heart aside.
Thiel steadies him to stop him falling.
‘Never mind me, sergeant,’ Guilliman rasps. ‘Kill the damned systems. Do what we came to do.’