by Guy Haley
‘Buy our flanking force time. Destroy them!’ she screamed. Domine Ex Venari howled; its song was picked up by the others, until every Titan in the line blared anger at their betrayers, a wall of noise that should have shattered the enemy through terror alone, but still they kept on coming.
‘Half speed back, target the tanks. Third, Sixth and Ninth Maniples, good hunting.’
The Titans waded backwards into the sea, firing all guns as they went. The thunder of their guns was deafening, a rolling, snapping, crashing wall of sound that obliterated the roar of the ocean. The waves were wiped from existence by the return fire of the enemy and void shield displacement activity. Beach and water churned into dirty foam that barely had time to settle before another shell hit sent it pluming upwards. Laser blasters turned the sand into glass. Missile hits filled it with craters. Gatling blasters dug trenches with bullets the size of men’s heads. The air was soon so thick with spray, sand, smoke and blood it made a grotesque kind of fog.
Domine Ex Venari was up to its waist in water when a new alarm rang. Esha had heard it so few times she failed to recognise what it signalled. A thrill of fear from the Titan’s machine-spirit let her know.
‘Boarders! Yeha, take the strain a moment.’
‘Aye, Esha.’
The crushing weight of dominating the Titan passed from Esha. Free of its presence, she sent her consciousness into the subsystems, checking little-used augur eyes arrayed in armoured housings upon the Titan’s surface.
She caught the boarders at the back, about to breach the door. There were five of them, wearing fully enclosed carapace armour rigged with climbing gear. They clung to the shoulders around the access portal with magnetic pads. Some of the grapnel firers had been successful after all.
They activated a fusion device, and swung out of the way. Its detonation took out the watching augur along with the door.
Yeha Yeha groaned with effort. She was of princeps material, perhaps, but was a long way from commanding her own Titan. Esha quickly dipped back into the manifold. The moderati primus gave a noise of relief, blood trickling from her nose behind her helm’s visor.
Alarms whooped from every part of the czella. Snapping lasgun fire rattled around the atrium, audible even through the thick cockpit door, as emplaced lasers dropped out of the ceiling and raked the room. They were silenced. Esha could get no vid-feed from the room on the other side of the czella door.
‘Weapons moderati, report,’ she voxed.
The three of them voxed back quickly, stating their names. Their voices were distant. All three were deep in the manifold, and ignorant of what was happening within the Titan.
‘Omega-6, report in,’ she voxed.
No reply. The enemy could be battering their way into the reactor. Down there, in the cramped space around the core, was the realm of the Titan enginseer. He was alone, overseeing the dozen slaved servitors bonded to the machine directly, whose neural architecture supplied part of the basis for the Titan’s own mind. If the enemy got in there…
Switching back and forth between the view of the battle and the czella made her head spin. On the shore, the enemy infantry had come as far as the water. The tanks stopped within the shelter of the dunes, where mounded sand would blunt the impact of god-weapons. A barrage rippled along their line like a salute. Each impact weakened a void shield, nudging their efficacy down, allowing shots to pass through. When the last failed, the hail of explosives would hammer into plasteel skin. On their own the tank shots were insignificant blows. Together they could slay a demigod.
A clang rang off the czella door. A point of bright, molten light grew in the centre. Intolerable heat burned Esha’s back, and Domine Ex Venari’s war-horns blared in sympathetic pain.
Esha slapped the restraint release on her harness, got up and drew her laspistol. The interface cable pulled painfully at her skull. She was still fully bonded via the MIU, and the interior of the cabin and the battle outside superimposed over each other sickeningly.
She could still see well enough to shoot. A Fasadian burst through the door, his face hidden behind a snout-like breathing mask. She raised her gun. The Titan lurched as it clumsily mirrored her movement. The man stumbled into the room, arms outstretched. She shot him through the heart, too late to stop the grenade bouncing down into the well where the moderati sat.
It went off with a sharp crack like a firework. Metal stung her shoulder. Yeha screamed, and Mephani slumped over her smoking console. Fire caught in her deck, setting her body afire.
Esha had no time to attend to the unfolding disaster. There was a second man behind the first. He wore no mask. His face was ghastly pale, showing the expression of a man undergoing a palsy. His muscles twitched; he drooled. His eyes rolled. He raised his gun stiffly, as if he were fighting his own movements.
‘I can’t… I can’t…’ he said. The gun shook. ‘My name is Etan Boq. I am loyal to the Emperor!’
Esha moved to the side. The Titan moved with her, nearly falling off balance, its stabilisers working at full capacity. Boq stumbled sideways into the doorjamb, sending his shot wide. The las-bolt hit Esha in the shoulder. Her arm went dead and her gun fell from her hand. She cried out, and Domine Ex Venari screamed with her. Boq grunted with effort, trying to keep the gun down. She saw now that a blood-crusted device was clamped to his forehead. A single, red point of light glimmered malevolently on its side.
‘No! No!’ he moaned. ‘My name is Etan Boq! I am loyal to the Emperor!’
The gun pointed at her head.
Esha stared at him.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
Boq cried out, and lifted into the air. The point of a mechadendrite emerged from his chest. He blinked in surprise, and dropped to the floor, revealing Omega-6 in the doorway.
‘Neuro-slaves,’ said the tech-priest. ‘Diabolical technologies. The Dark Mechanicum throw all morality into the smelter in their rush for knowledge. They will damn us all.’ His bloodied appendage whisked back beneath his robes, and he toed the body with an armoured foot. ‘This poor soul betrayed no one.’
Fire suppressant gushed from an extinguisher. Jephenir Jehan doused the body of her comrade. The smell of burnt meat and chemicals choked them all.
Omega-6’s hood rustled as he looked up at Esha. ‘Can you fight, princeps?’
Esha probed the cauterised wound in her shoulder. She winced. She could not move her arm, but she did not need to. She nodded.
‘Moderati primus?’ asked Omega-6.
Yeha Yeha made a grunt that carried more affirmation than pain.
‘Then I shall be back into my chamber,’ said Omega-6. ‘This battle is not over.’
He went away towards the rear of the atrium. Bright light, reflected from the surface of the Chymist’s Sea, blazed through the shattered doorway into the czella. Wincing, Esha lowered herself back into the chair.
‘Let us finish this,’ she said.
The manifold rushed up to engulf her, taking away the greater part of her pain, and the battle outside refocused in her mind, once more supplanting the cockpit view.
More of the enemy were forming up. There were three lines of tanks now bombarding the Legio. Their tactics were suicidal and made no sense. She understood why. The finesse of control granted by the neuro-units was probably not great.
The enemy were dying in droves, but it was a battle of mutual annihilation. Another two engines had fallen, their overheating reactors boiling the sea into scalding mist.
War-horns blared on the far side of the gun line. Giant shapes swaggered out of the murk of battle: seven war engines from Third, Sixth and Ninth Maniples. Two Warhounds emerged first, inferno guns scouring the dunes clear with giant plumes of flame.
From the far end of the enemy battleline lesser war-horns sang. The remaining Knights of House Procon Vi attacked the enemy from the left, rolling up the f
lank.
‘Open fire!’ Esha screamed.
The Titans in the sea aimed everything at the Fasadian centre.
Trapped between the two halves of the demi-Legio, the enemy were annihilated, their broken remnants driven into the sea.
Not one of the enslaved Fasadians survived, but as Esha reflected later, in slaughtering their own people they had done the enemy’s work for them.
No attack came from the Hanjin Wastes after all, but there would be no reinforcements either.
Reaver Titan Domine Ex Venari
Nineteen
The Emperor’s Sons
Upon the fringes of the Beta-Garmon system, the veil between the worlds parted, and a fleet of incomparable size sailed free of the madness behind the world. Ships came in such number they blocked the light of the stars. Battlebarges, cruisers, battleships, carriers, troop ships by the hundred. On and on they came, a gathering of might that had emptied the crowded orbits of Terra. At their head flew the Red Tear, the primarch Sanguinius’ command vessel, an immense Gloriana-class battleship of rare make. Its form was unique and far divergent from its sisters, being cleverly remade to resemble the winged blood-drop badge of the IX Legion.
Sanguinius ordered the oculus shutters opened before the last of the warp’s unclean energies had bled off, so the crew of the Red Tear were forced to hold up their hands to their eyes to shield them against the otherworldly fires streaming off the flagship’s prow. Sanguinius stared into them as intently as an oracle reading the patterns of less uncanny flames. What he scried within them, he told no one, but took a stern expression upon his face, sat back in his throne and spoke.
‘So this is what Rogal’s muster has bequeathed us.’
The curls of the warp’s embrace flickered to nothing, giving clear view of a boiling sea of incandescent gas. No enemy awaited them. A signal from First Captain Raldoron saw five hundred warriors in red relax their weapons from firing positions around the edges of the command deck. Their movement was a sudden clatter, loud in the quiet of diligent men and women at work, then as suddenly gone. The Space Marines became still as statues, only the quiet hum of their battleplate reactors hinting at their living nature.
Beside Sanguinius’ throne was a second seat also made for a primarch’s stature, but Jaghatai Khan, for whom it had been installed, did not sit in it. The Lord of the Ordu had no use for thrones. He was poised forever on the edge of action, like his hawk namesake, ready to abandon its station in the sky and plunge down, talons outstretched, into bloody conflict.
‘The Garmon Nebula is born anew,’ the Khan said. He folded his arms. Like his brother, he was fully armoured.
Many places in the cluster that had been pure black now glowed with the embers of war. The Khan did not misspeak; it was as if the cloud of gas that had birthed the cluster had returned.
‘How many ships must have died to provide us this display?’ Sanguinius said. ‘We sail into a sea of fire.’
The Khan’s eyes moved across the view, unerringly seeking out each of the cluster’s major systems. He was so farsighted, and so calm, one could believe he saw onto the surfaces of those distant worlds and found no challenge there.
‘Thousands,’ said Jaghatai. ‘More.’ He looked to his brother. ‘This is as bad as we feared.’
‘Worse,’ said Sanguinius. He was pensive. Where Jaghatai seemed to look into every cranny of reality, Sanguinius stared beyond at a darkness mortal men could not apprehend. The Great Angel had changed, as had all the Emperor’s loyal sons, but the pain of treachery laid more heavily on Sanguinius than it did the others. One gold-clad hand clenched his throne arm, the other moved up to his chin. His wings twitched, rattling the ornaments adorning them.
‘We expected to fight our way through,’ said Khan. ‘Where is the enemy?’
‘I believe we are late,’ said Sanguinius. ‘Timecheck!’ he called down to an instrument pit built into the floor.
‘The voyage was passable,’ said the Khan, continuing their conversation as the crew rushed to fulfil Sanguinius’ request.
‘The warp is still in turmoil. The storm may be over, but the powers within work against us.’
An unmodified human in a Blood Angels fleet uniform presented the primarch with a scrap of paper.
‘We are late,’ said Sanguinius. He handed the note to his brother. ‘Weeks late. Open all vox frequencies,’ he called to his crew. ‘Send out messages via every means to all loyal factions. Inform them of my presence.’
‘Keep me out of it, brother,’ said Jaghatai. ‘Our plans should remain as we agreed.’
‘As we discussed,’ said Sanguinius. ‘Let your announcement be the roaring of your guns and engines. I shall be the hammer blow, you the striking dagger. Do you know where you shall go first?’
‘I have a few ideas,’ said Jaghatai. ‘I find it best not to tie myself to plans. To the likes of Dorn, plans are the walls of a fortress – to me they are the bars of the cage. I go where the wind blows me.’
‘You are the wind, Jaghatai, the hurricane, the tornado!’ said Sanguinius.
‘Sometimes I am, when opportunity permits,’ said the Khan. ‘Move fast, strike hard. Improvise. But no hurricane, no matter how it gusts, can blow out the fire we see here.’
Sanguinius nodded. The light from the burning clouds ahead lit his face in fiery orange, and turned his wings golden. ‘If only we could.’ He looked to his brother. ‘That is not our purpose. If we can stop Horus, we shall, but having seen the void itself aflame, I say Dorn’s assessments were correct. The matter will not be settled at Beta-Garmon. We bleed him. We break his forces. We steal as much of his might and his impetus as we can, then we depart to rejoin Rogal.’
The Khan inclined his head in acknowledgement. ‘I thank you for your company during this voyage.’ He paused. ‘I have been a little too eager to retain my independence. It has been a pleasure to spend some more time with you.’ He looked at this brother with proud eyes. There was a yearning to be away in them, but he spoke sincerely.
Sanguinius bowed his head. ‘My hospitality is ever at your disposal, brother.’
‘And mine at yours,’ said the Khan. ‘I will ready my Legion. I shall inform you of my first target decisions before we depart. After that you shall know of my deeds by the cries of our enemies.’
‘As it should be.’
‘No doubt we shall not meet again until we stand shoulder to shoulder upon the walls of the palace.’
Sanguinius stood from his throne. Jewels tinkled all over his armour and wings. He embraced his brother, and rested his cheek against the Khan’s.
‘Make sure you return, my brother.’ His words were a sorrowful whisper in the other’s ear. ‘There are too few of us to stand against him. If we are both lost here, we doom our father.’
‘Nothing shall stop me.’
‘That I wholeheartedly believe.’
‘You will also be there,’ said the Khan.
Sanguinius’ beautiful eyes closed against a private pain. ‘We shall see.’
They parted. The Khan grinned. ‘You will be there, the Great Angel, stood against the coming dark!’ He gestured at the burning void. ‘This sally is but an appetiser. The feast of war awaits us on Terra, and you will have a place at the table. It can be no other way.’
‘We must trust that it is so.’ Sanguinius’ smile could not hide his sorrow.
‘Until next time.’ The Khan laid his hand on his brother’s shoulder. Their gazes locked. ‘Do not do anything rash.’
‘I shall try not to.’
The Khan nodded, and walked away. The Sanguinary Guard stationed by the main access portal to the command deck clashed their weapons in salute as he departed.
Sanguinius sat back upon his throne. ‘Raldoron,’ he said, calling his First Captain to him. ‘Oversee the gathering of intelligence. Present it to me
as it comes in.’
For many hours Sanguinius remained on the command deck as the fleet hung stationary in the void. At first there was no response from the beleaguered worlds and Sanguinius was left to brood. His visions of death had not left him, and though he had come to terms with what must happen, the fact he did not know when or where his death would befall him tore at him. The Warmaster could be speeding towards his fleet that very moment. He might have only hours to live. He could have months. But he was going to die, that much was sure.
There remained the possibility that he rushed too fast for this confrontation. Knowing the future made it harder to deal with. Was he, in fact, responsible for his own death? Were the visions he suffered of his bloodied corpse and Horus’ triumphant face the result of his own impetuous need to see out the prophecy? He was numbed by the paradox. Act, don’t act – the decision tormented him, despite his resolve to see past the hard trammels of fate and forge his own destiny. His experiences on Davin had removed most of his doubts, but intensified others.
He thought of his wayward brother, the Night Haunter, whom he had cast adrift in space.
I think, thought Sanguinius, that I understand you now, Konrad. You go to your fate, and I go to mine.
The Red Tear knew his pain. Like him, it had been deeply hurt, and like him it had yet to be fully restored. Guilliman’s shipwrights had done their best during the heretical days of Imperium Secundus, but much good work had been undone again by the Veritas Ferrum, the daemon ship sent to bar them from Davin. He felt its aches as his own. Both appeared hale on the surface. Both were wounded in the heart.
A deep gloom descended over the primarch, in which he was lost for some time, staring out of the oculus at the sea of fire. In his mind he saw Horus’ face, bloated beyond recognition by dark powers. He saw the swing of his maul. He saw his own death again. And again. He remembered the price his sons would pay, the twin curses unleashed by his demise. If there was any viable alternative, he would take it, but on offer were only two differing sorts of damnation. The sense of purpose he had found on Davin was fragile. Like a fire, it required tending. Its fuel was faith, and Sanguinius found his faith wanting.