by Guy Haley
The censer skulls thrummed around and around. Balefires glowed in their eyes. Colquan made a feint to draw an attack, to see what response his opponent would offer, but the plague lord did not fall for the trick, and repositioned himself, kept up the whirl of the skulls, and spoke.
‘I was born upon Barbarus,’ he said. His voice was surprisingly pure. ‘I have fought the Long War since the days of Horus himself, where I walked the ground of Terra, and saw the Imperial Palace burn.’
More fluid welled from his mouth as he spoke.
‘But I have never slain one of your kind, corpse-watcher.’
Then he struck.
The skulls hissed through the air at Colquan. It was a blow that would shatter tank armour, delivered fast. Colquan was faster still, and sidestepped, and the skulls passed by to smash a hole in the deck. Pipes beneath the plating ruptured, gushing steam into the hall. Colquan went to attack while his opponent was off balance, only to meet the spiked butt of the flail thrust at him. His guardian spear’s jab hastily turned to a parry, and he turned it aside. The adamantium blade met iron shaft in an explosion of lightning, but the champion’s weapon was undamaged, durable despite its rusted appearance.
The champion followed up his counter-attack skilfully, dipping the head of the flail and circling it up, round and over in a figure of eight to send the chains whirling again. He kicked out and down towards Colquan’s foot, scraping sparks from his auramite greave and slowing the tribune’s backward step enough that the champion was successful in bringing the flail around and into the tribune’s helm.
Colquan’s head snapped to the side, staggering him. Encouraged, the champion attacked again, but Colquan got his spear up, and the chains wrapped about the powered head. Yanking hard, the blade cut through two of the three flail chains, and the skulls bounced along the floor. The third remained wrapped about the haft of his halberd, and there followed a contest of strength where Colquan attempted to wrest the flail from the grip of his opponent and the champion tried to stop him.
Gene-forged strength vied with Chaos power, and the two were drawn into a warrior’s embrace, chest to chest.
‘You are weak, corpse-guard. Feel my strength, my vitality. This is the gift of my god. Where are the gifts of yours?’
Colquan threw himself back, dragging the plague champion with him. He planted his back foot solidly, and the Plague Marine stumbled into him. Colquan released the haft of his guardian spear with his right hand, and drew his misericordia. The champion wrenched hard on the tangled weapons, only to find Colquan’s power knife punched through his breastplate, and buried in his primary heart.
Black blood gushed over Colquan’s hand. He let go of his spear, grabbed the warrior about the head, and pulled him close. He leaned in to the fallen Space Marine’s helmet.
‘We have no need of gods,’ he said, and ripped the misericordia sideways. He was almost thrown back by the force of sundered atoms, but took the explosion on his auramite, the plague champion still clasped close, and obliterated his second heart.
He worked his arm around further, thrust his fingers into the traitor’s respirator grille, twisted hard, and broke his neck, kicking the body back before it hit the ground so he could retrieve his spear.
The Plague Marines were retreating. On the left Guilliman’s Victrix Guard had gained the gallery, and were fighting ferociously to clear the upper level. On the right, the Custodians had blocked and then turned back the tide of reinforcements coming through onto the main deck. The Death Guard fell back in good order, still firing, retreating through the doors they had arrived by, leaving their dead behind.
Guilliman fought the last of the daemon engines while the Allarus Terminators fired bolts after the foe. Whatever havoc the Death Guard had thought to wreak upon the boarders had gone unrealised. Several blue-armoured bodies were mingled with the fallen, but none of the golden warriors had died, and the sons of Mortarion lay all about in heaps, and their daemon engines were blazing shells emptied of their possessing spirits.
With a blow of the Hand of Dominion, Guilliman punched in the front of the last blight hauler. A few more bolt-rounds crackled off. Custodians and Victrix Guard went among the fallen, finishing off wounded enemies with misericordia and power gladius.
There was no need to call for a halt. The veteran Space Marines and Custodians did not pursue their foe into the labyrinth of the ship, but re-formed, and waited.
Colquan quickly appraised the standing of his troops. Two of the Custodians were injured, but their battleplate was uncompromised, and the plagues of the enemy had no hold on their Emperor-designed physiology.
An Apothecary’s reductor whined as it cut out the gene-seed of fallen Space Marines. A moment’s tense silence passed.
‘Onward, to the command deck,’ Guilliman said.
Guilliman’s group encountered little more resistance. A few packs of lesser daemon engines attempted to delay them, but these were quickly dealt with, and the Imperial advance proceeded rapidly down corridors silent but for the reports of the ship’s main armaments. It appeared the main strength of Plague Marines had come against them in the hall, and having failed at that ambush, those remaining either hid themselves away or fled for the planet, as fleet auguries suggested they were doing now from several other boarded vessels.
Few mortal crew presented themselves. Those that did were summarily executed. Daemon-infested devices were smashed. Pitiful agglomerations of flesh blended with the vessel were scoured with fire.
There were a few moments for rest as automated defences covering the approaches to the command deck were dealt with, and it was by the light of a burning skin wall infested with eyes that Colquan and Guilliman spoke.
‘This is disappointingly easy,’ said Guilliman.
Roasting eyes popped and hissed in the fire. Rancid fat dripped flaming to the ground.
‘The enemy has few of his real warriors aboard this ship,’ said Colquan. ‘He preserves his strength. Nothing can stand against three crusade battle groups. I am surprised he even bothers with this pitiful blockade.’
‘It is the same story across the fleet,’ said Guilliman. ‘It is as we expected. This is no serious attempt to prevent our landing, but a delaying tactic. The majority of Mortarion’s forces will be on the surface, if his goading me to come here was not simply a diversion, and he intends to strike elsewhere.’
‘I do not believe so,’ said Colquan.
‘Nor do I, but all possibilities must be accounted for, examined and evaluated,’ said Guilliman. ‘Nothing is impossible until the moment for it to occur has passed. Mortarion’s freedom to move through the warp makes pinning him down irksomely hard, yet if he means to kill me, he will be on hand to gloat. This is obviously a trap, and yet it is one we must willingly go into. Mortarion uses himself as bait. This a dangerous strategy for him, because if his trap fails, I shall have his head. He will know this.’
There was a bright flash and a shower of sparks up ahead, followed by a short burst of bolter fire. Shouts came back down the corridor that the next bulkhead door had been cleared. Guilliman’s guard gave a thunderous advance and presented their shields in a wall across the now open way.
A turret cannon encased in jelly-like growths opened up. The Space Marines raised their shields, deflecting the heavy-calibre rounds with their power fields, and ran forward. They kept up their formation until they were past the maximum depression of the gun and into its blind-zone. One of their number stepped forward, and lopped the barrel off. Ammunition exploded inside, and the gun sagged, bleeding, in its mount.
‘Clear!’ the warrior shouted.
They reached the final portal to the command deck. A hundred deranged baseline humans, mutated beyond reason, mounted a brief but futile defence, and were cut down in short order. Melta bombs blew wide the bridge doors, and Roboute Guilliman strode into the nerve centre of the vessel.
It was filthy, and stank. Stringy growths hung from machinery, linking them to one another. Shuffling humans worked failing machines. Tallow sticks gave off a greasy light. The crew did not look up from their tasks as the regent of the Imperium of Man strode among them.
‘Kill these wretches,’ Guilliman said. ‘All of them.’
With murderous efficiency, the Adeptus Custodes and Adeptus Astartes despatched the bridge crew. They were simple, idiot beings, their will decayed, and put up no resistance beyond a pathetic mewling.
‘The Death Guard and their officers have withdrawn,’ said Guilliman. He looked around him at the flesh-clotted control galleries and servitor choirs, the occupants of which were reduced to grinning, green skulls engulfed by rampant organic growths. ‘Colquan, secure a teleport lock and have us removed from this vessel. Aquila Resplendum, launch. All other assault parties withdraw.’
‘This ship has been primed to self-destruct?’ asked Colquan. There were no signs that this was the case, no alarms or fail-safe announcements, and no change in the ship’s reactor hum, but what the primarch was saying made perfect sense.
‘A very probable practical,’ said Roboute Guilliman. ‘It is what I would do. Mortarion put this target here for me to select. He staged enough resistance to keep us occupied.’ He went to the cracked oculus and looked out over Iax.
‘The opening moves of his game,’ said Colquan.
‘Our match of regicide continues. Doubtless it will for all time,’ said Guilliman. ‘It would be too much to ask the universe to allow me simply to kill him.’
Guilliman watched the void battle, if such a feeble resistance was worthy of that name. Mortarion’s fleet was falling to pieces. From the command deck, it was even more obviously a delaying tactic rather than a concerted effort to win. The largest, more valuable ships were sailing away, and the lead vessels were already passing over the horizon of Iax. What was left were medium-sized craft, and the grand cruiser they currently stood upon.
‘He intends to slay as many Space Marines as possible,’ said Guilliman. ‘Most of these ships will be rigged for detonation. A costly gambit, but Mortarion always plays the card of attrition.’ Guilliman contacted fleet command, and gave orders that all boarding parties on every ship were to retreat immediately, and that engaged warships were to pull back to safe distances. ‘I wonder where that putrid cur he calls a son is to be found? Typhus commands the largest plague fleet. His presence would have presented some difficulties.’
‘A shame he is not here, my lord,’ said Colquan. ‘I can think of few other traitors who I would more gladly slay.’
The last of the human crew were executed, and the Custodians began to arrange themselves for emergency teleport extraction, while the Victrix Guard prepared to be retrieved by ship. Doctrine would dictate that Guilliman withdraw to the centre of Colquan’s group, but he remained by the oculus, looking over Iax. He remembered a blue-green jewel of the void, a perfect marble, an example even to wider Ultramar as to how mankind could live in harmony with his environment. Mortarion had struck deliberately at this place to wound him. Guilliman felt his jaw clench. All he could see now were clouds the colour of jaundiced skin. From galactic beauty to a weeping sore on reality. His anger grew, but that was what his brother intended.
‘Teleport lock secured,’ announced one of the Victrix Guard.
‘Then withdraw us, immediately. Sicarius, do not delay to get your men off the vessel.’
‘Yes, my lord.’
Guilliman kept his eye upon his ravaged garden as arcs of power crackled over his armour. The metallic smell of warp energy crowded his senses. There was a flash, that infinite instant of suspension, where he felt his soul called to join the wide seas of the warp, then a strobing, and he was suddenly aboard the Macragge’s Honour, wisps of corposant curling from his limbs and his eye-lenses spidered with warp-frost.
Decontamination teams moved forward, slow in their high-hazard suits. Wide nozzles sprayed counterseptic all over him and the other returnees. Conclaves of human psykers played their powers about the room, for the maladies of the Plague God were not all beholden to physical law.
As Guilliman underwent the first phases of cleansing, he voxed the command deck.
‘Khestrin,’ he said. ‘How goes it?’
‘We are withdrawing to safe range according to your orders, my lord,’ the fleetmaster responded.
‘Do we have any lock upon surface targets?’ asked Guilliman, already knowing the answer.
‘Negative, my lord, we have no indication of surface features beyond the provinces around First Landing. Our augurs are blind over eighty per cent of the planet. I commanded attempts at clairvoyant scries, but our astropaths too report a lack of success. What they can see is not where it should be, and it moves.’
‘Then it is as I predicted,’ said Guilliman. ‘Iax is so drenched in the warp it renders geography meaningless. We must go down to the surface.’ He lifted up his arms to allow the counterseptic jets access to his armpit joints. His battleplate ran with chemicals. Full decontamination would take over an hour.
‘The first of the enemy ships has auto-destructed, my lord.’
‘Helm feed,’ demanded Guilliman.
A thumbnail view of the void appeared in his vision. The fading glow of plasma marked the demise of the first ship. As he watched, another craft detonated, his primarch’s sight unflinchingly taking in its blinding death. His attention strayed to a list of casualty figures scrolling down another part of his helmplate. He found his irritation with Mortarion redoubled. By stationing these ships where he had, the daemon primarch had forced him to choose between the lives of his Space Marines and his subjects on the planet below.
‘As soon as they are done with this pathetic display of pyrotechnics, take up geostationary high anchor over First Landing. Prepare for limited combat drop around the capital, and get me some charts of the place. Assault on Iax’s primary space port will begin at my command.’
Another signal cut into Guilliman’s communication with Khestrin. A fleet control officer, by the sigil appended to his request to communicate.
‘Speak,’ said Guilliman.
‘My lords, I am sorry to intrude, but we have an unsanctioned force already making their approach to the target planet.’
‘Who, and under what authority do they claim rights to land?’ demanded Guilliman.
‘It is the militant-apostolic, my lord,’ said the officer. ‘He has his crusade and takes the Cadian Four Thousand and Twenty-First with him. He invokes the right of Bellus Primus of the Adeptus Ministorum, claiming the authority of the God-Emperor Himself as his justification for assault.’
Guilliman had to restrain himself from giving any indication of his anger.
‘Thank you for informing me.’ Guilliman severed the connection. ‘Can you call the Cadians back, at least, Isaiah?’
‘They are unaffiliated to any particular command,’ said Khestrin. ‘When they joined the crusade they pledged themselves to the office of the militant-apostolic almost immediately, and he accepted. We could order them back, but they will be under no obligation to obey.’ Khestrin paused. ‘We could cripple their ships instead, my lord.’
Guilliman felt an uncommon fury. ‘What, and risk providing the Church with a martyr, and my detractors with proof of my contempt for their beliefs?’ said the primarch. ‘What is his target?’
As a reply, Khestrin played Guilliman a short audex extract. Mathieu’s voice had become more strident since the happenings on Parmenio. His zealotry was now openly expressed. Guilliman was not surprised by this, for he could not explain satisfactorily what had happened at the Battle of Hecatone himself.
‘For the glory of the Emperor we land first!’ Mathieu was shouting. ‘For the glory of the primarch, we shall take the port!’
‘The void port, then,’ said Guilliman. ‘L
et him be. He may save us the effort of fighting for it ourselves. I shall deal with him myself, if he survives the landing.’ He thought a moment. ‘Send strike craft to cover his descent. Let him come to no harm. Prepare my diplomatic barque to take me down, not the Aquila Resplendum. We go with the branches of peace extended. I will land myself as soon as I am cleansed.’
Having spoken, the primarch broke the channel.
‘My lord,’ said Colquan over a vox-link. ‘What has occurred?’
‘Not what, but who. Frater Mathieu has slipped his leash.’ Guilliman gritted his teeth. ‘He is a most turbulent priest.’
Chapter Ten
FAITH’S LIGHT
The transit hold was full of singing by the time the ship came in to land. It competed with the roar of engines, it shook the hull more than the violence of atmospheric entry. The lander was old. It grumbled its way through the upset skies of Iax, and upon hitting the ground, sank into its landing gear like a dowager settling into her skirts.
But it got them down safe, praise be to the Emperor.
Trumpets blasted with such volume they stirred the hair of the occupants, and sent their banners waving. Mathieu exulted at the holiness contained within that ship, his army of true believers, come to purge the garden world with flamer, sword and song. The noise his battle congregation made was a tonic to the soul. Any daemon that heard that sound would surely quail, for the Crusade of the Witnesses was going to war.
Giant pistons slammed back. Atmospheric seals uncoupled. A hiss of equalising pressure joined the crusaders’ song. Cogs twenty feet high ratcheted backward, then locked; the drums they restrained were released, unspooling lengths of chains with man-sized links. As they clanked through their guides, the grand stair-ramp descended ponderously, allowing in a slot of leprous light. Decorations unfolded themselves from their stowed positions, unfurling like paper sculptures, making pulpits and statues. Anticipating release, the cyber-constructs that accompanied the Crusade of the Witnesses rose up from their roosts, flocks of wooden angels and sanctified skulls. Mathieu’s own companion was up there among them, and Mathieu rejoiced that the spirit of his teacher would see yet another world, and experience another morsel of vengeance for her murder.