The Burden of Loyalty

by Various

  Bjorn looked up. Kva had unleashed the storm, and tongues of ice-bright lightning snapped and seethed from the deck to the cracked roof, impaling Terminators on twisting columns of glassy aether-matter and blowing them apart from their core. Armour fragments, spotted with boiled blood, joined the clouds of metal shards spinning through the air. The volume of raw noise became ear-shattering, echoing from every shell-pocked wall and rebounding across the battlefield.

  But the wrath of the Rune Priest was nothing compared to that of his primarch. Russ barrelled into the wall of Terminators like a breaking avalanche, shrugging off the torrent of shells zeroing in on him and driving into the enemy head-on. Those in his path were smashed aside, their armoured bulk cracked and bludgeoned by the star-blaze arcs of Mjalnar. Russ wielded the frostblade two-handed, swinging it like a warhammer, severing neck joints and slicing clean through battleplate. He was soon surrounded by an orbital welter of blood and electro-static, flying in slicks around him as he opened his throat and roared out his wrath.

  ‘Fenrys!’ he bellowed, summoning all the wrath of the ice-world’s soul. ‘For the ice world!’

  Russ had not fought with that freedom in a long time. The kinetic force of his charge drove the Alpha Legionnaires back towards their teleportation loci, fighting furiously just to avoid annihilation on the edge of the frostblade.

  Bjorn had seen enemies dissolve entirely in the face of his pri­march’s charge. He had seen xenos turn tail and flee, and even Legiones Astartes formations buckle when faced with the psychic shock of the unleashed Wolf King. The Alpha Legion, though, held firm, falling back in steady ranks, fighting hard, still trying to bring him down.

  With a sudden lurch, Bjorn realised the truth of what Russ had said. His brother must be among the Terminators, fighting with them, holding them together. His presence was almost palpable, bleeding through the tumult like hunt spoor. Bjorn raced back into combat, hunting now for the slightest sign of difference – a taller enemy, a faster one, one immune to the worst of Kva’s storm-fire.

  His hearts spiked with exhilaration. There were two primarchs on the bridge, and the prospect of bringing retribution to the author of all their pain spurred him into even greater feats of combat. Bjorn charged at the Terminator downed by Kva’s warp-lightening, who was already clambering to his feet and aiming the autocannon again.

  Three of Bjorn’s battle-brothers came with him, running hard, firing from the waist even as they activated their close-combat blades. They leapt as one, a blur of grey amid the fractured whirr of the battle, and landed as one, hacking and tearing like a pack of wolves on the neck of its prey. Bjorn had come down on the Terminator’s neck, plunging his claw between helm and gorget. The second Wolf took out the autocannon with a glittering power axe, another checked the Terminator’s swinging power fist with a storm shield, while the fourth chopped its feet from under it. Acting in close concert, they dragged it back to the deck, their movements a whirl of blades.

  Bjorn ended the contest, jabbing his claw in deeper, breaking the seal and being rewarded with a jet of blood seething up the length of his jammed talon. As he had done so often, he ripped his blades free, dragging strips of flesh with them and flinging them away.

  He threw his head back, let his lungs unlock and roared out his battle-fury. The warriors around him did the same, filling the bridge with the massed howl of the Rout unleashed.

  But there was no time to bask in the kill, for the enemy was still a threat; two thirds of its strength was intact and clustering around Russ, concentrating all their energies on bringing him down. Bjorn burst clear, head low, firing into the mass of Terminators ahead.

  You are here, he mouthed, and picked his target.

  As the space around him dissolved into frenzied combat, Ormand staggered back behind the throne dais, his presence forgotten. The Rune Priest who had dragged him before the primarch strode off into battle, his skull-topped staff crackling with eye-burning lightning-spears. Every Wolf on the bridge was now fighting, charging into the heart of it, heedless of the damage being meted out by the massed Terminator assault.

  The columns above him cracked, spraying him with splintered stone. Combat lumens flickered and faltered as their chambers were shattered. The flagship was listing badly, its course faltering as decisive command was wrenched away from it. The Alpha was still visible in the forward oculus, still pouring on waves of las-fire despite the presence of its own warriors aboard. A hundred battles­ were taking place across other bridges and within the hulls of other compromised starships, each led by squads of Space Wolves or Alpha Legionnaires, each utterly committed to the kills that were now coming freely.

  Ormand staggered, feeling blood slosh in his armour. They had taken his bolter from him, and he felt useless and weak. He fell to his knees, dragging breath heavily through his bloodied mouth. Looking out across the raging battle made him nauseous. The fatality rate was already crippling. Whichever Legion emerged as the victor would carry horrific casualties, and for a cause that even now made little sense to him. His Calibanite brothers understood the war only in rough outline, derived through snatches of garbled astropathic messaging and a few captured vessels running ahead of the gathering storm. Withdrawal into the depths of Alaxxes had exacerbated the isolation, something that could never have lasted forever even if events had not forced their hand.

  As it was, they had been dragged into the light prematurely, their long vigil disturbed by the afterglow of a far greater conflict. With no guidance, and no way of getting any, they had done what they could to establish the truth.

  Ormand sank to his knees, bracing against the base of the pillar beside him. Russ was still at the heart of it, still breaking his en­emies apart, a mountain amid the swirl of lesser warriors. Seeing a primarch fight made him keenly aware that he had never seen his own, and had no knowledge what it must be to follow one of the eighteen into battle.

  Perhaps that was what had made his people as cautious as they had been. The heritage of Caliban should have bred more fortitude – selecting the enemy had never been difficult under the shadowed eaves of the eternal woods. Seeing the two Legions grapple with one another, knowing what he knew now, he began to see the shape of it all unravel. The tangle of interlocking claims came apart, revealing a certainty beneath, one that he had been grasping at ever since reading the combat logs.

  When the impulse-unit at his wrist lit up, he almost missed it. He shuffled down further, edging into the shadow of the pillar, and lifting his gauntlet to his mouth.

  ‘Where, then?’ he asked.

  ‘Close,’ came the crackling voice from the unit. ‘We thought they had killed you. We are glad to be wrong. Do you have anything else?’

  ‘You surely have what you need.’

  ‘Just one word.’

  Ormand looked up, casting his pain-filled gaze across the scene of carnage. The Wolves were fighting hard, but their end was now snapping at their heels. The primarch would be downed eventually, his claws bloody, and then the battle would be over. With the Hrafnkel gone, the fleet would follow. Having seen them in all their defiant glory, he found he could no longer be impartial.

  ‘Loyal,’ he said, wondering, as the word left his lips, whether that was any longer something to celebrate. ‘There can be no doubt.’

  Russ hacked his way through the enemy, barely seeing those whom he slew. They were a blur, a mass of armour and muscle, inert fodder for his blade. He had already sensed the true enemy, and besides that presence nothing else mattered. He ignored the wounds he took and the losses of his pack around him; he just kept moving, grinding through the walls of sapphire and gold.

  He had never hated Alpharius, not like Guilliman had hated him. The Alpha Legion had been an irrelevance, an afterthought, a gang of shadow-huggers at the beck and call of Horus who were worthy of nothing more than faint scorn. At least Magnus had been a proper enemy, out in the open, getting
his hands thick with sorcery where it could be seen. Alpharius had been... nothing. A whisper, a suspicion, an echo.

  That was no longer the case. Russ’ loathing burned white, a seam of diamond in his soul. There was no victory in this fight any longer, just a chance for vengeance under the gaze of the Hrafnkel’s graven images.

  You are a sword in the wrong hands, my brother.

  They had been empty words when they were spoken, and now they were even less than that. Deception or no, Magnus had deserved his fate, and if they were all damned now then at least there was penance in eliminating another traitor before the end.

  ‘Face me, brother!’ he roared, his mighty voice rising above the thunder of battle. He crunched aside one Alpha Legionnaire with his gauntlets before eviscerating a second, never resting, his entire body transmuted into a machine of battle-fury. ‘My ships are burning! My sons are dying! What can you fear now?’

  And then, before him, the battlefield suddenly opened up. The surviving Wolves pushed the gap wider, grappling with foes that outmatched them but somehow forcing a chasm between the ranks.

  At the far end of the opening, standing alone, was a legionnaire in Terminator plate, arrayed just as all the others were. There were no unique sigils on his armour, no deference from his brothers around him, but Russ knew.

  He lowered Mjalnar towards the Alpha Legionnaire’s neck.

  ‘I mark you!’ thundered Russ, breaking into the charge that would carry him close.

  The Terminator braced, accepting the challenge, saying nothing but readying a long blade that spat with an emerald energy field.

  Before either of them could strike, though, the viewports above suddenly blazed with light. The deck rocked more violently than before, buoyed by a shock more profound and more violent than any starship could generate. Hrafnkel’s bridge quaked, harrowed to its core, and combatants were thrown from their feet.

  Even Russ was driven to his knees as the deck see-sawed around them. Mortals were crying out now, not from battle-lust or pain but from shock. The remaining view screens filled with new signals, bursting with runes that spilled from repeater-stations and overlaid the already congested battlesphere.

  Russ steadied himself, peering up at the real-view portals to get some idea – any idea – of what had happened. For a terrible moment everything went dark, as if the void beyond had wrapped itself around them to choke the last life out.

  Then the shadow cleared, replaced by rows upon rows of glittering lights, each one lodged amid a plunging rock face of astonishing size. Turrets sailed past, colossal towers, bridges and parapets, each one crusted with ranks of ship-killing weaponry. Engine thrusters bigger than whole destroyers glowed hot red, bleeding out into the void like shackled suns.

  From under the shadow came more warships, each one as dark as night, unmarked by battle but with their weapons primed and ready. Dominus-class warships headed up a whole flotilla in assault formation, dropship bays open and gunwales unsheathed.

  The colossus was a star fort, a Ramilies-class world-ender, one of the great anchor-engines of the Imperial arsenal. Even alone such a monster would have been capable of taking on the two battle-ravaged fleets that now lay under its vast shadow, but with its escort flotilla in tow the shape of the encounter had altered entirely.

  ‘Come about!’ Russ shouted, seeing the star fort’s guns angle towards them. ‘Pull clear! Pull clear!’

  His cries were given no time to have an effect – even if the navigation crews had been able to enact them, the ships were too close and too damaged to respond.

  But the star fort was not aiming at the Hrafnkel. Its immense beam weapons opened up, sending star-blaze shafts leaping across the void. The Alpha was hit hard, its shields deluged with a tide of spilled plasma, and it slewed wildly away from the impact. Other Alpha Legion ships were also hit, cracking apart from the impact shockwaves, their engines exploding as more lance-hits burst clean through them.

  In the wake of the ranged assault, black-armoured attack craft screamed through the gaps, racing past the hulls of the engaged battleships and strafing them. Their larger battleship counterparts moved into firing positions, swinging around to expose long, macrocannon-filled flanks.

  The Alpha Legion ships, having been in the ascendant for so long, were suddenly overhelmed by wave after wave of attacks. The remaining Wolves hit back where they could, responding instantly to take advantage of the sudden reversal of fortune. All across the battlesphere, boarding parties were hastily recalled and attack runs pulled back to bolster faltering lines. Everything swayed on a fulcrum, teetering wildly until the new shape of battle could be determined.

  Russ pulled himself to his feet, searching for his opposite number amid the confusion. Teleport-bubbles were snapping open again, pulling Alpha Legion Terminators back to their own flagship before it was ripped apart by incoming fire.

  The lone Terminator facing Russ activated his locus, and aether-frost raced up his armour shell. He deactivated his weapon and inclined his helm in what might have been acknowledgement, or mockery, or maybe just regret that they had not locked blades.

  Russ watched him go, still too far away to intervene. All around him, his surviving warriors got back to their feet and reached for their weapons, hunting down any Alpha Legionnaires whose tele­port loci had failed, or limping back to the command stations to oversee Hrafnkel’s retreat from the fury of the warzone.

  As Russ looked up at the oculus above him, his whole body still burning with hyperadrenalin, he saw the star fort rise higher, gaining altitude over the battle-plane in order to give it a steeper fire-angle. The sheer size of it was incredible – even after serving alongside full Imperial expeditionary fleets, some of which had contained war engines of a similar class, such a creation could still impress him with its flamboyantly outsized majesty.

  Russ saw Bjorn limping over to him, his armour marked with bolter-impacts. Bjorn twisted his helm off, exposing a bloodied mane of dark hair.

  ‘There is your answer,’ he said.

  ‘To what?’

  Bjorn nodded towards the real-viewers, still dominated by the underside of the colossal star fort as it ground its way after the imploding Alpha Legion vanguard. ‘The serpent, the many-headed beast.’

  For a moment, Russ did not see what he meant. Then, as the vast armour-plates slid past, he caught sight of the star fort’s emblem – a lone sigil mounted within a ring of gold, embedded at the very heart of its armoured underbelly.

  Perhaps the name had come from Terran lore, or maybe it harked back to one of the many warped beasts of Caliban. In any case, the image was unmistakeable – an amalgam of lion, dragon and snake, rearing on clawed hindlegs, surrounded by gold runes arranged in twisting, branch-like patterns.

  ‘Chimaera,’ said Russ, reading the massive ident-plate.

  ‘The runes read aright.’

  The star fort passed overhead, driving the Alpha Legion vessels away from Hrafnkel’s local space. Russ felt a hollowness, the aftermath of a fight he had been destined to lose. He had never been saved before, pulled away from defeat by the actions of another Legion. Something of Lord Gunn’s old intransigence flared up within him then, the pride of the Rout, pricked by its failure.

  We were the guardians once. We were the watchers over all the others.

  Now they were just one of eighteen Legions – humbled by the XX Legion and rescued by the First. There was a kind of symmetry in that, though one that made his stomach turn.

  ‘What are your orders, lord?’ asked Bjorn.

  Russ snapped out of his introspection. The void was still alight with ordnance, and the battle was not yet won.

  ‘All survivors rally to Hrafnkel,’ said Russ, sheathing Mjalnar and striding back to the command throne. ‘We must see what we have left.’

  He paused then, looking at the devastation around him, the blood on the
decks, the ruins of what had once been the centre of his undefeated war-fleet. It would take months to restore, if such a thing were even possible.

  But that paled beside the greater grief, the one that could never be expunged.

  They had lost.

  ‘I recognise my failing,’ Russ said, speaking to himself, unheard by the others. ‘Be assured, I recognise it at last.’

  V

  The arrival of Chimaera changed everything. The Alpha Legion fleet had been spread wide, outflanking the numerically inferior Wolves in order to bring the maximum amount of fire to bear. Reserves had been minimal, as had sensor-watch on the extremities of the void chamber.

  The star fort had emerged seemingly from nowhere, though in reality the seasoned First Legion pilots had used the curtains of cloud to mask their approach, relying on the augur-distortions created by the Alaxxes Nebula’s idiosyncratic effect. The star fort’s firepower was enormous, just as its makers had intended when they built it – it was a battle-changer, a fleet-killer, a system-destroyer.

  The Alpha was mauled deeply during the first exchanges, placed as it was at the forefront of the XX Legion’s assault on Hrafnkel. It might have been destroyed entirely but for the sacrifice of its escort wings, including three strike cruisers with full battle-complements of Alpha Legionnaires onboard. Even so, the flagship barely made it beyond the range of Chimaera’s gunnery crews, limping back into the heart of its own fleet, its spine burning.

  The prospect of resistance lingered a little longer. The Alpha Legion still had a full battlefleet, which despite three full engagements was in far better shape for combat than the equivalent Wolves ships. Lines were drawn, and commanders swivelled their ships’ flanks to present broadsides.

  As the starships closed, however, the scale of the turnaround became brutally apparent. The Alpha Legion’s forward lines were doused in a rolling tide of beam weaponry, punching through shields and rupturing drive-housings. A whole raft of lesser warships exploded in sequence, spraying shattered hull segments across the void. The Alpha and the other major battleships responded with concentrated volleys of their own, but the disparity in severity was obvious. When the remaining Dark Angels battleships piled into the attack, joined by the few Wolves vessels still capable of launching significant actions, the reverse soon threatened to become a massacre.