Roboute Guilliman: Lord of Ultramar

by David Annandale

  Iasus severed the spine of one of the attackers. He sprayed bolt-shells in an arc before him. He brought retribution. The orks died, but the horde did not care.

  Theoretical: each of our losses is a true step back.

  There was no countering practical.

  His strategy was sound, but in the end, it would hinge on numbers. Each Ultramarine was irreplaceable. Every ork that died gave way to twenty more. The shift in tactics had bought time. He had hoped it would be enough time to stem the tide at last.

  It was not.

  'Courage and honour!' Iasus shouted again. The words were the truth he lived as he fought. They were the ultimate worth of victory. He did not know if they would be enough.

  Guilliman led a forced march through the tunnels, heading north at speed, cursing every cave-in and detour that slowed the advance. The reports from the other Chapters were coming in fast. They flowed through Habron, who updated Guilliman as the situation changed. And it was changing too quickly.

  'All pyramids are currently under attack on two fronts,' Habron said. ‘By siege and infiltration'.

  'The scale of the interior battles are something more than infiltration,' Guilliman corrected.

  ‘Acknowledged, primarch. The...' Habron paused. Guilliman heard him mutter quietly and dispassionately to himself as more data poured in. 'The primary enemy forces are indeed inside the ruins,' Habron continued.

  'What is the state of the external attacks?'

  ‘In all but one case, those orks are being held outside the pyramids.' Good, Guilliman thought. If the orks had linked up with each other, that would be a sign of the battle going badly for the Ultramarines contingent at that location, and the signal for things to grow much worse.

  ‘The orks at our initial location are being contained outside. There have been no attacks from the inside as yet.'

  More good news. Guilliman had left a much smaller force to hold that pyramid than was inside the others.

  ‘The pattern we noted from the start is remaining consistent. The orks are in greater concentrations in the northern sectors of the ruins.'

  'Questions that need answers,' Guilliman said. 'Why that pattern?

  And where are they coming from?' The streams of orks down the mountainsides had greatly diminished in the final stages of the Ultramarines' drive through the plain. He had thought the supply exhausted. It was not like the orks to hold a reserve.

  'The strength of the interior attacks is much greater than available data would have indicated.'

  The avenues of attack also troubled Guilliman. The orks had staged what amounted to surprise attacks. The warnings of their approach were too short, their numbers too great. He looked at both sides of the tunnel his phalanx was marching through. The passage was so wide, the walls were barely visible, shrouded in deep gloom. He eyed the smaller passages as the lights of the tanks flashed over them. Inside those side tunnels, he knew, were still smaller tunnels. The Scouts from all Chapters had reported finding them, the minor byways of the endlessly proliferating labyrinth of the ruins. Theoretical: smaller shafts exist within these tunnels as well. The orks had had over a century to learn all the routes through the labyrinth. The idea of the brutes having the strategic foresight to use unexpected hidden routes struck him as flawed, yet it was the best analysis he could make with the information he had.

  Practical: anticipate attacks in this region even when they seem unlikely.

  The unanticipated was already under way everywhere else.

  He opened the command channel on the vox once more. 'Ultramarines, hear me. We are coming. You will be reinforced. Hold against the orks, and we will destroy them together. I am advancing north. We will exterminate the enemy one step at a time. At every stage, our victories will free up more troops to assist. Our retaliations will grow more terrible. Legionaries of the Twenty-second, your battle is the most heroic. Hold fast. Your brothers from all Chapters will soon be punishing the greenskins at your sides. Together, we have already claimed this fortress. Together, we will purge it.'

  He stopped talking. He sniffed. His lips pulled back in anger.

  'Contacts,' Habron warned.

  'I know,' Guilliman said. In his rage, his boots struck the floor with greater force as he marched. They sent chips of stone flying. 'Marius,' he voxed to Gage. The Chapter Master Primus had returned to his position midway down the column. 'We do not stop. We do not slow. No. Matter. What.'

  'Understood.'

  They came, then. The orks burst from the dark. Along a third of the length of the phalanx, they roared out of the side passages. Howling tributaries flowed into the main tunnel, forming a wave on each side of the Ultramarines. The waves came in, surging in the face of bolter fire so intense that the muzzle flashes filled the tunnel with blinding, strobing, killing silver day. They came from the front too. The huge passage extended for hundreds of yards, curving gently to the west. Guilliman heard the mob and smelled it before it came into sight. He ran faster. He was fury now. These thoughtless creatures were anathema to everything he held to be true about war. They were an offence against everything the conduct of battle should be. Now they had dared to disrupt the narrative he had brought to Thoas. They had done enough damage. He charged the orks as if their refusal of any rational form of war were a personal affront.

  Guilliman opened fire with the Arbitrator. He and the Invictarii struck first. Their charge was faster. It was more furious.

  It was more dangerous.

  The tunnel erupted. The orks died and died and died.

  Still they came, their animal revel undaunted.

  In the strategium of the Cavascor, Hierax watched the tacticarium screens. He listened to the litany of reports coming from the bridge below the command pulpit. Servitors recited lists of shifting coordinates in their flat voices. The dead recitations suggested nothing of the meaning they carried, their news of shifting battles and growing losses. The augur and vox officers delivered their updates in clipped, precise tones. Hierax read their tension in their posture, subtly changing from unbending to rigid.

  The news from the 22nd had him swinging between frustra­tion and rage. In the strategium, he filtered the vox feed so he heard only the command channels of the Chapter. Several times, he was on the verge of speaking. He held back each time, wait­ing until his picture of the battle was clearer, keeping his voice out of the clutter of communications. He would speak when he was of use. The situation the rivers of data formed was grave. He could see how the primarch was countering the orks. Guilliman was sweeping north. The other Chapters were holding their own. Reinforcements would surely tip the balance against the greenskins. The strategy would create cascading reinforcements, the victory of each position providing the means to guarantee the triumph of the next, until the combined might of the Legion struck the largest concentration of orks attacking the 22nd. Already the gunships were pounding the exterior positions of the orks outside the northernmost pyramid.

  'Not enough,' Hierax muttered. The orks outside were a distraction. There were three levels of fighting in the pyramid. The Chapter was divided, and the orks were not. From the orders shouted by the Chapter Master and the captains, Hierax tracked the rapid shifts in the conflict. The disposition of the forces was fluid.

  Theoretical: the primarch will not arrive in time.

  Practical: the Destroyers can.

  I can end this.

  Hierax broke in to the combat channel. He would be heard by all the senior officers. 'Chapter Master,' he said. 'Requesting authorisation for the drop pod insertion of the Second Destroyers. We can be at your position within minutes. Our weapons-' 'Authorisation denied,' Iasus said. He grunted as if something had hit him. The other voices faded out momentarily as dose bolt pistol fire drowned out the rest of the feed.

  'Our brothers need us,' Hierax said.

  The channel was still open, the exchange still being heard by the other captains. Hierax was on the edge of insubordination. The other captains said nothing.
Bursts of explosions and chainblade growling marked their individual struggles. The sounds vanished. Iasus had changed the communication to a private one.

  'Our orders are to preserve the ruins,' said the Chapter Master. 'Yours are to await the command to deploy. Not to initiate it.' He cut off the vox.

  Sinas drove his chainsword into the chest of the warlord. The ork was not much taller than the others around it, but it was wider, a tank of flesh and bone. It carried hammers in each hand, and swung them forwards to batter Sirras' armour. The blows were tremendous, and the ork kept striking as the chainsword whined through muscle and ribcage. Blood spurted. For several seconds, Sinas was blinded by a deluge of crimson. The hammers hit him again and again. Another ork attacked him from behind. He was drowning in red and green. The blood flowed off his helmet and he shoved his chainsword all the way through the ork. Its arms fell limp. Its torso split with a tearing of muscle and fell backwards. Sirras whipped the chainsword around and into the flank of the ork behind him. The smaller brute shrieked as the teeth of the blade chewed its flesh apart. Sinas cut the ork down one-handed. He fired his bolt pistol to the right, three shots taking off the upper half of the skull of a greenskin rushing at him with a sword as long as a man's arm. He was surrounded by bodies. They were hemming him in. The orks kept coming, and his movements were more and more restricted. A green wall was trying to bury him alive.

  It was trying to bury the entire company. Sinas had followed the strategy commanded by Iasus. He had led the charge against the orks. He had known from the start it would not succeed. The orks were simply too numerous. With the support of the heavy armour, the greenskins would have been hurled back. Progress in the extermination would have been made. With the tanks idle except for heavy bolter turrets, the orks surged forwards, trampling over their dead. The charge of the 223rd Company was bogged down before the first junction. The great xenos wave battered the Ultramarines. It overwhelmed individual brothers. It sapped all forward momentum. The horde flowed around the legionaries. No matter how many they killed, more still came. They rampaged through any gap in the lines. Every Ultramarine who fell opened the way to the orks. The flood found the cracks in the dam, and the orks forced the 223rd back and back.

  Sirras shouted in frustration. He turned full circle, sawing through limbs and sending shells through skulls. There was no retreat, Iasus had voxed as he changed tactics. Every dead enemy was an advance. Perhaps that was true for the Chapter Master. Maybe the orks weren't pressing as hard two levels below. Up here, things were different. Up here, Sirras killed with as much fury and speed as he ever had in his decades of service to the Legion, and still he was going backwards. Even if he was standing still, he was losing ground. The losses were mounting. Iasus kept urging all the companies of the Chapter to keep on the offensive. We've lost the offensive, Sirras thought. The 223rd was fighting for its survival. The density of the ork horde in the tunnel was like a moving wall. Even if all the orks in that mass were dead, it would have pushed the Ultramarines back.

  'Close formations!' Sirras urged. 'Shoulder to shoulder! We are each other's shields!'

  The order was unnecessary. The company was already contracting. He spoke to be present in the ears of the legionaries who, like him, had become isolated in the flood, their nearest brothers having been brought down. There was no forwards. There was only the green tide, and perhaps the hope of retrenchment. Sirras turned and killed, turned and fought. He cut an ork in half vertically. The body fell apart, and between it he saw a fractured squad forming, a small island in the midst of the storm. He lunged in that direction, sawing and shooting through bodies. Axes and cleavers chopped into his armour. Orks shot him at point-blank range, injuring themselves with the ricochets. The bullet impacts began to take their toll. Damage runes flashed amber and red in his helm lenses. Servo-motors whined. There was a drag in his left leg, a microsecond delay between his impulse to move it and the armour's response. He compensated. He fought harder. He blocked a chainaxe, its motor spewing smoke. Sword and axe shrieked against each other. He shot at the orks hacking at his right flank. Another slammed a cleaver into his left. The chainaxe leaned more heavily against his sword. He ignored the blows on his sides and brought his pistol forwards. He fired a burst into the ork and into its weapon. The greenskin dropped and the axe exploded, raining burning promethium over the combatants. Liquid flame sloughed off Sirras' armour. It coated the faces of his nearest attackers. They struck wildly through their blindness, howling anger and pain. He dispatched them with furious contempt. He was that much closer to the squad. He snarled as he butchered his way forwards. He saw other lone warriors, like him, fighting their way towards the group. At the back of his mind, he was aware that his combat technique had become less precise, more savage. He raged in frustration at the constriction of space that made the elegance of his combat skills useless. He raged at the enemy, and at the currents of war that had turned to run in the orks' favour.

  He raged too at his Chapter Master. Hierax had requested deployment. He had seen the need. Iasus had shut his answer off from the captains. Why bother? Sirras wondered. If you don't want us to hear what you have to say, then we can guess all too easily what you said.

  There was no longer any sense in the tactics that had governed the campaign until now. There could be no preservation of this region of the ruins. The true aim of the campaign - annihilation - must be the touchstone. This was obvious beyond any need for analysis. He burned with the need to strike back hard, to carve victory from the enemy's hide with all the force of his frustration and hatred. Massive force against massive force. He gave voice to his rage.

  'Land Raiders,' Sirras said. 'Heavy weapons reauthorised. Targets as before. Fire at will.'

  The tanks had not changed position. The enemy was everywhere. Their hatch gunners were firing heavy bolters in a three hundred and sixty degree arc. They had killed hundreds of orks, and prevented them from storming the roofs of the tanks. They were surrounded by heaps of sundered bodies and brass shells, yet they had managed to clear no space, or to ease the pressure of the howling, slavering horde. They were at the entrance to the tunnel, forming a line Sirras had intended as an obstacle, but which had been no more than rocks in a foaming river.

  Now they would be more.

  Six pairs of twin-linked lascannons fired as one. The tunnel filled with molten light. Hundreds of orks perished in a single moment. Radiant heat blasted back through the pyramid, so intense it blistered skin. The sound was beyond searing, a shriek molecular and gigantic. As the scream faded, the chatter of the heavy bolters became clear again. The guns were pounding the corridor wave once more, tearing apart more of the stunned greenskins as the lascannons powered up. The Land Raiders fired a second time.

  The air in the pyramid smelled of fire. The heat was cumulative. So much energy into so many bodies, the organic mass of the orks making the vast space claustrophobically small. Weapons designed for the open battlefield incinerated the interior wall. The Land Raiders fired a third time.

  'Captain Sirras,' Iasus voxed. ‘What are you doing? Ceasefire! Cease fire!'

  Sirras silenced him. I am winning this war, he thought. A fourth barrage. A fifth. The rock of the tunnels began to glow. The heat was turning lethal. On the other side of the tanks, in the pyramid's chamber, Sirras saw some of the smaller orks stagger, their flesh smouldering. The pressure of the horde diminished.

  Sirras joined up with the squad. Their coordinated fire annihilated the orks before them, and for the first time in hours there was space to move, and to turn the art of Ultramarines warfare against the greenskins. The ork losses grew. The lascannons fired, and fired, and fired. The shriek of energy and the skull-crushing boom of the blast wave became the call and response of a choir of perfect destruction. The song resonated to the beat of Sirras' hearts. It seemed his anger had stepped beyond him, become a terrible entity, and was striking out at the world of the ruins. He could even hear the pounding of its fists, and the crack
ing of the ruin's bones. The sound of those blows grew louder yet, and Sirras realised what he heard was real. Something even greater than the star-born fury of the lascannons had come. The sound was huge, deep, terminal. Sirras looked up. The glow of the rock in the tunnel had spread like veins over the stone of the pyramid. Flames and muzzle flares created more illumination. Sirras saw the cracks rush up the walls

  to meet at the pyramid's apex. A hail of rock fragments began. Larger and larger pieces fell to the floor of the upper level. He saw the entire structure begin to twist like a tree in the wind. The stones beneath his feet shook. They began to move in different directions. The pyramid groaned. It wailed like a thing alive, a thing that had woken to the world only to breathe its last. The darkness of millions of tonnes hurled itself upon him.

  The clear-eyed understanding of war must perforce include the understanding of the disaster. The disaster is the reality that the will to victory chooses to dismiss, and therefore courts. This is not to say the disaster must be anticipated. Yet it must be expected. Even in the most rigorously reasoned campaign, mistakes will occur. Beyond the control of the commander are the events of chance. The unforeseen can never be extinguished from war. Disaster waits in the error, in chance and in the unforeseen. The skilful leader will seek to stave disaster off, but over a sufficiently long time period, the disaster becomes inevitable. It is not regarded as such, however. Fatalism is as injurious to battlefield success as naivete. The battle must be fought as if the disaster is impossible until the disaster is real. How it is countered is the true test.