by Guy Haley
‘My lord.’ Raldoron’s words penetrated Sanguinius’ thoughts, but did not rouse him. He heard them as an echo of a memory, something caught just on the edge of hearing as the maul descended again. ‘My lord. Sanguinius.’ The First Captain’s hand rested on the golden forearm of his lord, small as a child attempting to comfort his father.
Sanguinius came abruptly alert at the contact, making Raldoron take a wary step back.
The Great Angel looked about himself in confusion, unsure of where he was. His face cleared.
‘Raldoron.’
The captain saluted. ‘The first communication has arrived.’ He held out a plastek flimsy, printed with hard black words.
Sanguinius took it. He scanned the marks of purity and relay details. It had come from the command centre of Alpha-Garmon, passed through the great Carthega Telepathica, the giant temple-relay on Beta-Garmon II.
He glanced up.
‘Is this all it says?’
‘Besides the detail, yes,’ Raldoron said.
Sanguinius returned his eyes to the single line of text, translated from a psyker’s dream. Below it were columns of information of military strength and current strategic circumstance, but the personal message held his attention.
Sanguinius read it aloud. ‘Thank the Emperor.’
Then communications from all over Beta-Garmon began to arrive.
The astropathic messages trickled in slowly, in ones and twos at first. When a few more hours had passed, they became a flood.
A picture was pieced together quickly from the flow of information. A large tactical cartolith was ignited, and as each scrap of data was processed, more of the situation in Beta-Garmon was filled in.
Dorn’s Great Muster had not proceeded to plan. A lack of coordination was apparent right across the warzone. Within the first day, several commanders presented themselves as being in overall command, three of them openly denouncing the claims of the others. So many different armies, ranging in size from ragged bands of survivors to entire battlegroups, had arrived in the cluster from all over the Imperium that it would tax even Sanguinius to organise.
‘Dozens of worlds, millions of men, scores of Titan Legios,’ he said, going over the latest batch of communiques. ‘All arriving from different directions, under different commanders and at different times.’
‘Too much of it is being fed piecemeal into the grinder,’ said Raldoron, gesturing at the hololith. ‘There is effectively no organisation here. Why are these Titan Legios throwing themselves into battle alone? Why do they not fight together?’
‘They are proud and independent,’ said Sanguinius, ‘even of the forge worlds they protect. The reorganisation of the Mechanicum is further compounding the problem.’
‘It is madness. They are discarding our opportunity for victory.’
Sanguinius looked at his gene son. ‘In similar circumstances, we would be no different.’ Sanguinius set the data-slate aside. ‘What can we expect? The ripples from the Ruinstorm yet perturb communications and transit. This is the great war of our epoch. More than guns endanger us. The so-called gods themselves work against our every effort.’
‘This is not Signus Prime,’ countered Raldoron. ‘There is no mention of daemons in the messages. The materium is free of Neverborn taint.’
‘It is not Signus Prime,’ said Sanguinius. ‘Nor is it the madness of Davin, or the insanity of the Veritas Ferrum, but daemons and poisoned reality are not the only tools of our foes. There are many assets here that were once the Emperor’s to command. We are opposed by the great entities of the warp. No war will ever be simple again. There can be no victory here, only the forestalling of defeat.’
‘Even so,’ said Raldoron, ‘we have the Carthega. It should be a tool for command, but instead it is used for the listing of the slain. The tally of the dead grows longer by the hour. What purpose does it serve to mourn the dead when the living still die?’
‘With no one to issue commands, it is unsurprising it is put to this use. It is a cry of pain to Terra, which I have answered.’ He stood. ‘Raldoron, call together my captains and my Chapter Masters. We have enough information to construct a plan of war. We meet in the prime strategium within the hour. Make it so now.’
‘My lord,’ Raldoron bowed.
Sanguinius raised his voice to address the command-deck crew. ‘The rest of you here, continue your spying. Bring me everything there is to know about the cluster. I do not expect my brother to show himself to me without effort on our part, but I will face him. Seek him out, find me the Vengeful Spirit. Find me the Warmaster, so that we might bring him to heel.’
The crew redoubled their efforts. Servitors ground out mechanical affirmations of orders received. As Sanguinius noted their diligence with satisfaction, fresh lights shone in the void. He looked out to see the White Scars vessels pulling away from the greater armada alone. That was their way, to hunt and fight without support, striking with no warning. The great ships seemed to move slowly, but they were accelerating all the while, and soon they were only bright points amid the universe’s display of cosmic baubles. Then the void shivered, and the White Scars slipped into the warp, and their lights were gone.
‘Good hunting, brother,’ said Sanguinius.
Messages came through from the Khan, and were brought to his attention. Sanguinius waved them away. He did not need informing of Jaghatai’s first target. If he knew his enigmatic brother at all, it would be a worthy strike.
He sat and became thoughtful again as he awaited the gathering of his Legion. A black humour settled deep into his bones.
For the first time since his struggles at Signus Prime, he was truly alone.
Twenty
Disaster at Theta-Garmon
Nuntio Dolores prowled across a metal plain larger than a continent. 103-4 was a gargantuan assembly plant where subassemblies were brought together and made into voidships. An artificial construct that size was massy enough to generate its own gravity field. Areas of higher density boasted a natural pull close to a third of Terra. Where the plate thinned, or was hollow with vast dry-docks or construction halls, it tailed to nothing. Gravitic topography was complicated by the varying supply of artificial pull to different parts. Gravity lenses formed in places where multiple inhabited decks were stacked atop each other, the effects of their grav-plating magnifying each other. Conversely, where the orbital plate had taken heavy damage and power was lacking, there was precious little pull. The effect for a Titan was akin to negotiating a treacherous mudflat, where one wrong step could see a man sucked into deep quicksand, or plunged over his head into water. Harrtek kept a gravity map front and centre of his MIU interface, using that more than the visual cues the landscape had to offer to plot his course.
No ship had been made at 103-4 for three years. It had suffered extensively. Giant craters surrounded by petals of blackened metal peeled up by internal explosions scarred the surface. Huge, sudden holes, steep and straight-sided as wells, opened without warning in front of him, the result of lance hits. Other starship weapons had carved their own, unique signatures into the body of the orbital, overlaid by the lesser marks of Titan weaponry. But 103-4’s sheer size made it a prize worth fighting over. It was a stable island in the dark which offered control over numerous attendant satellite realms. The Gardoman Hub rotated twenty thousand kilometres away, its details model fine. Iridium was a toy moon decorated with brutal, industrial adornment. Dozens of other orbitals swarmed around 103-4, near and far, damaged and whole. 103-4 was the ruined capital of a rich kingdom, and so the Legio Vulpa went to war over it again.
Four days ago, thousands of Imperial ships had burst from the warp and made directly for Theta-Garmon V. Accompanying them were the god-machines of Legio Atarus, the Firebrands. Unlike the Imperial Hunters they replaced, the Legio Atarus were a confrontational Legio, closer in character to the Legio Vulpa. Even their
colours were similar, being red, black and gold. The balance of their engines was of middling classes – Reavers, Nightgaunts and Carnivores – but the aggressive manner in which they deployed them made up for the relative paucity of heavier machines.
Harrtek looked forward to facing them again.
War raged in a blazing storm all around Theta-Garmon V. The Legio Solaria might not have achieved much directly, but the Iridium moon was the gap into which the pry-bar of Legio Atarus was inserted. The loyalist forces rapidly reinforced their holdings there, and began immediate operations to retake Theta-Garmon V. All over the sprawling void-yards, Titans of Legios Fureans, Atarus and Vulpa were embroiled in deadly battle, while the endless black of the void was turned white by the fury of starships.
Five maniples of the Death Stalkers defended 103-4. They marched across the central portions of its hugeness in a loose crescent twenty-five kilometres across towards the drop zone of Legio Atarus. There were hundreds of Titans present in the battlesphere, but its sheer size meant they were thinly spread. The traitors were at a disadvantage, forced to defend everywhere while the loyalists could pick the field of their choosing, safe under the protection of their superior fleet.
Harrtek watched dozens of contacts coming in fast under heavy void ship escort. Coffin and drop-ships detached from Titan conveyors and came speedily down to the surface. In the maps projected into his mind’s eye the contacts split, new dots budding from the originals like bacilli growing from their parent cells.
The minds of all connected swelled with pride. In the conjoined mentalities of the crews and machine-spirits of each individual Titan the pride was strongest, but it bled out along the slender links binding machines into maniples, and maniples into demi-Legio, momentarily uniting them into something bigger than man or machine.
They were Legio.
Harrtek checked the mission timer. It ran backwards towards the Mechanicum’s surprise, and the promise of victory. Ardim Protos’ Mechanicum acolytes assured them Atarus would fall. Vulpa’s concentration upon 103-4 was the bait to the trap. Elsewhere, a similar ploy was being undertaken by Legio Fureans: middling strength concentrations of Titans to lure out the full force of their enemy.
This better work, Harrtek thought. We have too many engines held in reserve to win by honest means.
Harrtek bristled still at Bavin’s election. The others had snubbed him after the Legio Solaria assault. They thought him a coward for not attacking during the last battle, even when Maniple Eighteen’s idiotic ambush had cost them two of its engines. He was in poor humour. His head ached, and Nuntio Dolores was being difficult. Relying on the schemes of tech-priests to save them from Bavin’s lack of tactical subtlety poisoned his mood further.
Harrtek brought his maniple to a halt a little ahead of the others in the shadow of a tower five thousand storeys tall. Blackened holes riddled its sides, big enough that the void war could be viewed on the other side.
Surface turrets panned endlessly back and forth, their servitor control systems locked in a permanent seek and destroy pattern. These were only small, anti-munition and anti-fighter positions. The voidship killers were several kilometres back, clustered in groups around the deep shafts of power exchangers where they could tap directly into the reactors deep within the structure. Such weapons could hit any target around the orbital plate. The lack of defensive coverage at the Legio’s current position was more about the ability of multiple batteries to work together than a question of range. Past Harrtek’s location the station was dead, its power relays smashed, halls open and weapons inactive. Beyond the point of good function the certainty of swift ship kills diminished, and the chances of god-engine loss to the guns of the enemy navy increased.
That was why Atarus was setting down there.
Titan eyes scanned the horizon. Despite 103-4’s vastness, the horizon was near, hard against the black; a cliff edge that ended in nothingness.
Legio Atarus appeared as a line of winking dots. Without atmosphere to refract light, they were as sharply defined as if they were a hundred metres away, so much so they seemed like miniature representations of themselves. The void robbed distance of its power, broke the laws of perspective, and made the immense tiny.
Well within effective missile range, thought Harrtek. Nuntio Dolores’ mighty soul grumbled in agreement – too much, in fact. Harrtek felt the volcano cannon ready to fire at the machine’s own behest, and he was forced to exert his will to stop it.
A few seconds after, the line of advancing god-engines sparkled. Fiery darts arced from their backs, levelled off, and descended towards the Legio Vulpa. The missiles were lost in the blazing storm of ship on ship battles raging in the void all around the planet. The defence turrets around Maniple Seven’s position saw the missiles before Harrtek caught sight of them again, angled upwards and opened fire. Nuntio Dolores’ subsystems peeped out small warnings. Explosions erupted half a kilometre out all along Legio Vulpa’s line as the missiles were hit and destroyed. Several got through, slamming into the shielded bodies of the Death Stalkers. The Warlord Benediction of Blood took four direct hits, its void shields blurring, sparking and collapsing one after the other, leaving it naked of protection.
Those Titans so equipped opened up with their carapace-mounted missile batteries. Apocalypse launchers spat out rapid volleys. Nuntio Dolores shifted jealously. In the airless void, the exhaust fires of the projectiles glared brightly, flaring in the Titan’s autosenses and cutting down visibility for the fraction of a second that they climbed up and away from their firers. More than half of the demi-Legio’s Warlords present had laser blasters rather than missile pods, Nuntio Dolores included. Giant servomotors sang through the hull as the twin guns angled forwards, locking onto targets ordained by Bavin.
Harrtek thought little of the princeps seniores’ firing solutions, and from the sensation given out by Nuntio Dolores’ machine-spirit, the Titan didn’t rate them either, but Harrtek followed them as commanded, thought-ordering his weapons moderati to lock onto a Nightgaunt strutting across the metal plains. Harrtek upped Nuntio Dolores’ magnification, bringing the smaller Titan racing towards him as if he himself flew over the orbital shell. The view jumped a little, and it took longer than it should to bring it back into focus.
The machine moved around points of gravitic instability with a surety that crossed the line into arrogance. Its banners rippled oddly in the vacuum, sent into shivering, regular waves solely by the Titan’s movement. White and black bars covered its greaves. Badges proclaiming loyalty to the throne of Terra and the exiles of Mars covered its heraldry plates.
It deserves to die simply for that, thought
Harrtek.
More missiles flew silently from the backs of Legio Atarus. They crossed paths with those of Legio Vulpa’s and descended. Shield flare glimmered across the Atarus front, encasing the god-engines in glittering ovoids.
Because your firing solutions are worthless, thought Harrtek. Echoes of his dissatisfaction passed into Nuntio Dolores, and became waves that rippled out across the demi-Legio.
Legio Atarus’ princeps seniores was evidently of higher quality than Bavin. Rather than spread among all Titans, Atarus’ missiles continued their relentless homing in on a handful of machines. Though protected by the orbital’s point defences, enough of the missiles got through to give concern, rocking the shieldless Benediction of Blood, and bringing down the voids on one of the Reavers.
Titans move quickly. They appear ponderous, their strides as slow as the turning of the day, but like the speed of the sun through the sky, their slowness is an illusion. Pushing their reactors hard, Atarus’ Titans neared quickly, despite the dangerous terrain.
‘Damn it, Bavin! Adopt concentrated firing patterns. They’ll all get here if you continue this pointless split barrage,’ Harrtek lost his temper and shouted over the vox. He regretted his outburst instantly when Nuntio Dolores’ spirit rebuked him with a wordless jolt of pain.