by Guy Haley
Vox-operators listened hard to messages shredded by the boiling of reality.
‘Unknown,’ said one of them, eventually. ‘Tetrarch Felix reports Lord Guilliman and Mortarion are in a state of warp flux.’
A nervous, calm silence fell. All faces turned to the fleetmaster and the tribune.
‘Perform your roles. Stand your ground.’ Colquan turned back to the oculus. ‘This is nearly over.’
‘Lord Felix has given the order for the evacuation,’ said a woman manning one of the logistics desks. ‘Communications are at almost complete break-up.’
‘Empyric indices are climbing on every scale,’ reported the psy-augurum.
Vast networks of energy raced around and around Iax. Faces leered from the clouds. The planet seemed to flicker, as if it were no longer really there.
‘The storm is growing worse,’ said Khestrin. ‘Warp interface imminent. Status on the artefact?’
‘Actual position unknown,’ responded an officer. ‘Reconnaissance status unknown. Bombardment effect unknown.’
‘You should heed the tetrarch, launch the evacuation ships,’ said Colquan.
‘We stand to lose them all, if that storm is not broken,’ said Khestrin.
‘Better to risk a few ships’ crews if there is a chance loyal Space Marines might be spared.’ Colquan looked at the fleetmaster directly. ‘I do not like it. The Adeptus Astartes are flawed weapons, but they are the best we have. Bring them back, whatever the cost.’
Khestrin considered a moment.
‘Very well. Launch all evacuation ships. Begin fleet withdrawal from the planet. If the veil does collapse here, I will not have my ships pulled into the warp.’ Khestrin took a deep breath. ‘And begin preparations for Exterminatus.’
‘You would destroy Iax?’ said Colquan.
‘I would not, but I will if I have to,’ said Khestrin. ‘We must understand that this is the final battle of this campaign. Mortarion’s defeat and the purging of his corruption must be accomplished, or we will lose all of Ultramar, and more beyond. This is the stark choice we face. I will not commit any world to the fires of Exterminatus lightly. But those were the lord regent’s express orders. Things go against us. The artefact remains active. The planet fades from reality, and the primarch has fallen.’
A black bell began to toll. At the rear of the deck, hooded figures went to work. One came up, slow and solemn, to Khestrin’s dais, there to take the rod of activation from him, which was handed over with due, if brief, ceremony.
‘How shall it be done, my lord?’ the man intoned. ‘By Provisio Primus – sterilisation by virus bomb. By Provisio Secundus – sterilisation by atomic fire. Or by Provisio Ultrus – planetary annihilation by crustal disruption?’
‘All of them,’ said Khestrin crisply. ‘I want all of them. Nothing can escape this planet. If that damn aeldari witch’s predictions are correct, we cannot allow this disease to get off Iax.’
‘I say do not be hasty,’ said Colquan. ‘The witch made another set of predictions. We must trust those will come to pass.’
‘I command it to be done,’ said Khestrin to the hooded adept. ‘I speak on behalf of the primarch.’
‘Whereas I speak with the authority of the Emperor Himself,’ said Colquan.
‘So then, Custodian, do you claim to follow the religion you have long despised, and say He speaks to you now?’
‘No,’ said Colquan. ‘But we must wait. We are not finished yet.’
‘Why do you believe so? All the signs are against us,’ said Khestrin.
‘Because nothing can stop the Avenging Son,’ said Colquan, his eyes fixed once more on the planet below. ‘I know, for I have tried.’
Chapter Thirty-Four
A GOD TO FIGHT A GOD
‘Throne curse it,’ Maxentius-Drontio said. ‘The bombardment is not getting through to the facility.’
Lance beams stabbed repeatedly at the landscape. Most went wide, and those that were on target halted a hundred feet over the hospital, their beams dispersed into fizzles of weak sparks.
‘They are firing blind,’ said Achilleos.
‘That storm would make a mockery of a true shot even if they were not,’ said Justinian.
‘Sergeant Parris.’ Edermo’s voice was faint behind atmospheric interference and energy discharge. ‘The orbital bombardment is proving ineffective. Teleport lock impossible. We must attack the artefact ourselves. All assets to reinforce at our position. We have engaged and will occupy the enemy while you advance.’ He was fighting. Justinian heard the strain in his voice and the explosive crash of weapons against his storm shield.
‘We have to go in,’ Justinian said.
‘What about the militant-apostolic?’ said Achilleos, pointing back at the war train. ‘He was insistent he be delivered to the hospital, and it seems there is some effect around the priest that somehow keeps the daemons at bay. He could be useful.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Magos Fe. ‘Faith! A powerful weapon. Some say the living blade of the Emperor.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ said Maxentius-Drontio.
The magos shrugged. ‘It takes a god to fight a god.’
‘I am not so sure about the efficacy of prayers over bolts,’ said Maxentius-Drontio. ‘The war train is being affected now. It is rusting. Look.’
Corrosion had appeared over the train’s armoured plating and its pistons were catching, on the verge of seizing up.
‘Better to have all possible weapons. Edermo requested all assets, so we are going to take the militant-apostolic in,’ Justinian told his squad. ‘Perhaps he can weaken the daemon’s hold and open the artefact to the fleet weapons.’
‘If he cannot?’ said Maxentius-Drontio.
‘Then we will do it your way, brother, with knives and bolts, but for now he comes with us. It appears an escort will no longer suffice. We must fetch him. Brother Pasac, bring us around. Make this quick.’
The Impulsor swept back towards the war train, manoeuvring thrusters sending it into a tight turn. It blasted its way through the daemons shambling about on the hillside. There were many left, but their organisation was shattered. The war train’s formidable armament had banished thousands of them, taking out their leaders with well-placed beams of plasma and las.
While Brother Orpino and Pasac mowed down the foot-soldiers with the vehicle’s armament, Justinian had his men pick out the last remaining specialised daemons from among the masses. Those bearing scrolls, standards, instruments, the ones capering madly to encourage the rest. Their heralds and sorcerers, what passed for an officer class among them. They executed them at range where possible, felling them with hails of bolt rifle fire without getting too close, for the diseases of the stronger ones were dangerous even to the Adeptus Astartes.
The battlefield was among the most chaotic Justinian had ever experienced. Orbital fire slammed down from the heavens at random, flash boiling the clouds, shuddering the sky with artificial thunderclaps of superheated air, ionising the atmosphere and spreading spectacular displays of lightning from horizon to horizon that seemed to physically battle with that of the storm. They were lance strikes exclusively, and this along with the nature of the dispersal pattern told Justinian the fleet had no accurate targeting data despite the recon force’s broadcasts. As they sped back down the hill, they were lucky they were not hit themselves.
‘Frater Mathieu, can you hear me?’ Justinian signalled. He bellowed over the roar of the stubbers and bolters, hardly able to hear himself. His vox was spitting, as if the components were on the verge of failure. ‘Frater, prepare to evacuate.’
‘I do not think he can hear you, brother-sergeant,’ said Achilleos.
He was probably right. It appeared to the Space Marines that there was an intelligence working against the train, bringing evil magics to bear on its fabric, for though it ha
d resisted the accelerated decay at work everywhere in the zone, now it succumbed it did so faster than anything else, and there was a heaviness around Squad Parris when they moved into the train’s forward arc, as of a baleful attention. Something seemed to emanate from the ruined facility and press at reality, flattening it, threatening to smooth out the creases of individual lives into homogenous entropy. Their helm displays flickered. Power levels in their armour dropped.
‘I have never felt something this wicked,’ said Maxentius-Drontio. ‘The warp is strong here.’
‘The warp!’ said Magos Fe with a mad laugh. Lights gleamed from his pendants and detection devices. ‘This is not just the warp. We witness the influence of one of the Great Powers. The Plague God is fixed on the priest!’
He sounded terrified. Justinian, too, felt disquiet for the first time in years.
‘Well, if he is going to all that trouble, it suggests he is a threat,’ said Maxentius-Drontio.
Justinian hammered on the driver’s hatch, no longer trusting his vox-systems. It struggled to open, shedding flakes of decaying ceramite when it did. ‘Get us out of this area,’ he said to Pasac. ‘Approach from the side or it will undo us as well.’
Manoeuvring jets fired and the Impulsor skidded sideways. The train groaned. There was a hollow, metallic noise, and something gave at the side. A jet of steam a hundred yards high shot out at a steep angle. Its guns were grinding to a halt. As Justinian watched, a plasma cannon’s bearings rusted right through, and the weapon dropped free. Plasma vented in all directions, washing up over the fighting decks and searing pilgrims from existence. Screams joined the faltering hymns and the counting of the daemons.
With a grunting clatter followed by a great and weary sigh, the train came to a stop.
They ran down half a dozen daemons and halted at the train’s flank. The Impulsor’s engines were making an unhealthy sound. The train trembled with accelerated decay. Above, the songs of the last pilgrims were becoming anguished moans.
‘Wait here,’ Justinian ordered. ‘Turn about. Keep an escape corridor free. I’m going to fetch him.’
Justinian leapt up the side of the train, climbing hand over hand up its heavy decoration. This was disintegrating even as he went past the first gun ports, angels’ faces becoming formless blobs, their wings falling off. He reached a subsidiary fighting deck, and saw the pilgrims there were dying in puddles of their own rank fluids, the dead already like corpses left a week out in the sun. He ran through the mess, towards a staple ladder leading to the command pulpit. There were a pair of daemons moving about, mumbling numbers, and pawing at things with curious incomprehension. He gunned them down and hauled himself up the ladder, felt a touch on his boot; looked down to see the dead crusaders getting up, rictus grins on their faces, grasping for him. He kicked down, obliterating rotten skulls, and climbed.
His armour was suffering more now, the systems displays giving off plaintive peeps and whines. The coolant in his backpack was losing efficiency. The fluids around his polymer muscles were drying, and his warplate’s machine-spirits fought their own battle as he climbed. The train shook, and he guessed the reactor bonds were failing. The fires of its fusion core were going out. Rust ate through foot-thick armour in moments, quick as a time-lapse vid. One of the staple rungs came off in his hand, and he nearly fell.
He reached the top. A screaming daemon mounted atop a gargantuan fly dived at him. He shot out the mount’s soft belly with his bolt rifle, and it smashed hard into the deck. There were bodies everywhere, most killed not by violence but by disease. A few people moved weakly, afflicted by a dozen ailments at once. The angel and its command pulpit were ahead. The train shook beneath him as it underwent centuries of rot in moments, collapsing into itself. His armour was wailing now, running out of subsidiary systems to reroute its power flows through as circuit after circuit failed.
When he rounded the angel’s cast bronze robes, he did not know what he would see in the pulpit. He was genuinely surprised to find Frater Mathieu standing in perfect serenity while all around him the other leaders of the crusade deliquesced. His crusader bodyguard were piles of rusted armour and mildewed robes. Fungus and pallid plants that looked like drowned men’s fingers were growing rapidly from the remains. Knots of worms squirmed their way out of disarticulated jaws. But Frater Mathieu was untouched. He stood with an expression of rapture on his face, clutching his inactive servo-skull and stroking absently at the bone.
‘He is with me. He is with me,’ he was saying, over and over again.
‘Militant-apostolic,’ Justinian said. ‘You must come with me. This vehicle is no longer viable.’
Mathieu turned to him, as if he thought Justinian had been there the whole time. ‘Yes, I must. I must go there.’ He pointed to the facility, now so close. ‘Take me.’
‘Then let us go.’
The man did not move. There was an odd light playing around his eyes, and Justinian’s doubts as to Mathieu’s usefulness grew.
‘I don’t have time for this,’ Justinian said. He dropped his bolt rifle, went to the priest, and picked him up. From the command pulpit it was a sheer drop of forty feet to the Impulsor, where it hovered in wait, still shooting. Achilleos and Maxentius-Drontio had disembarked, and were firing on full-automatic into the daemons.
‘Pasac, get out a little from the edge,’ he voxed. ‘I am coming down directly.’
Trusting that his squadmate had heard him, Justinian took a few steps back, then ran at the parapet surrounding the pulpit, his armoured weight shaking the disintegrating structure. When he reached the edge, he jumped, his armour’s strength-boosting capabilities lifting him easily. He pushed off the wall as he flew over it, and arced down through the air.
The Impulsor rushed at him. He hit the centre of the transit deck. The vehicle sank into its contragrav field, then steadied.
‘Get back in,’ he ordered his men, putting Mathieu down. ‘Brother Pasac, get us into the medicae facility now.’
Achilleos and Maxentius-Drontio clambered back up onto the transport deck, gunning down monsters that attempted to follow.
Grav-engines howling, the Impulsor raced back up the hill, slaughtering daemons as it went.
Chapter Thirty-Five
A LIGHT IN THE GARDEN
For a moment, there was nothing but blackness.
‘Do you feel it, brother?’ Mortarion’s voice was a gloating hush that came from nowhere. ‘Do you feel the warp?’
Pain returned and Guilliman roared. His skin was on fire. His bones felt like ice. His organs were a hundred stab wounds. He was falling, tumbling over and over, into some nameless darkness.
‘Do not fight it, my brother,’ breathed Mortarion, and his voice seemed to be right by his ear. ‘Accept it, and Grandfather will spare you. You could join me. Together, we could overthrow our other brothers, cast down their false gods, and bring the galaxy the endless renewal of death and rebirth.’
Guilliman could not reply. Pain attacked him on every level, each part of his being suffered.
‘It hurts, yes?’ said Mortarion’s voice. He sounded almost regretful it was not he who was afflicted.
Guilliman dug deep inside himself, to some small corner that the pain had not yet found.
There was a light there. He fled into it.
His awareness shifted, and he was two people, two versions of himself at two different times.
The gate to the throne room was before him.
‘This is interesting,’ said Mortarion’s voice. ‘This is a memory you hide in. You went to see father? You want Him to protect you now? How touching.’
Guilliman, still tongueless, lipless, wordless, could only relive what he had seen. Trajann Valoris bade the great doors open. His words were a jumble, broken by time, his movements a fan of overlapping images in terrible shades of gold.
But when the gates ope
ned, and the light came out, that was pure.
Mortarion gasped in discomfort, and Guilliman felt a little hope.
He remembered. He relived. He had gone in to see what his father had become. Guilliman had been thousands of years dead. He had spent subjective years lost in the warp to come to Terra, only to find an empire of ruin laid starkly before his disbelieving eyes.
All building to this fateful moment.
There was light and fury, a radiance that passed through the bones and burned at the soul. Endless sound that filled eternities.
There were the wordless screams of the psykers drained to feed His terrible majesty.
There were visions of gods, and demigods, of a brown-skinned man of calm expression. Clad in skins. Clad in mail. Clad in clothes of all colours and bewildering variety. Clad in armour of gold. He had many faces, all proud, all betrayed. He saw Malcador in him, the first regent. He saw his brothers.
A million ideas battered him, memories from tens of thousands of years of existence. Random, circular trains of thought, obsessions, predictions and fears. So many voices, all the same, all different, none coherent.
He saw a dusty room, titanic in scale, crammed with machinery of awful purpose, the living dying in relay to sustain this monstrous thing. The centre was a machine of gold, shrouded in the dust of broken dreams. A skull-faced cadaver, all life gone, perched within its seat – but then the vision flickered, and he saw a king of infinite power, resting awhile upon His throne to think, only lost to His subjects for a while, and when done with His meditation He would rise, and rule justly. He saw a tired man who would be his father, giving him grave counsel he could not hear, telling him what he must do. Again, his view changed, and he saw an evil force to rival the great powers of Chaos. He saw sorrow, triumph, failure, loss and potential. There was no one face among all the faces, no one voice, but a chorus, a cacophony. The Emperor’s presence was a hammer blow to his soul, a tremendous scouring of being. He could not stand before it, and fell to his knees, though Valoris remained silent by his side as if nothing had happened.