Roboute Guilliman: Lord of Ultramar

by David Annandale

  - Guilliman, Treatise on the Disaster, 23.17.V

  Six

  DISASTER • NOTHING • REMAINS

  There was another junction ahead. Orks appeared in the left and right branches, running to join the battle. They were welcome to their demise, Guilliman thought. But either direction was wrong. To the north was another collapse. This was a major one. A large portion of the mountain roof had fallen through, crushing tunnels, leaving a sloping pile of debris that rose through open air. Guilliman evaluated the rise as he ran forwards, barely seeing the greenskins he slew. The largest boulders were scattered. Vehicles could get around them. The slope itself was not precipitous.

  'We climb,' he ordered.

  The Chapter rolled over the greenskins. The orks attacked in the hundreds, but they were not enough to blunt the advance. They charged into their doom as if they were energised by victories elsewhere, a spirit of brutal triumph infusing every ork on Thoas.

  Guilliman ran up the slope at the same pace as in the corridor. The air was clear, free of the greenskin stench. The collapse created a path that ran between two peaks. The Ultramarines followed it, moving north at good speed now. The ridge took them higher than any of the pyramids.

  'Too much to hope we can travel the rest of the way above ground', Gage voxed.

  'Likely,' Guilliman agreed. They were still climbing. He could not see beyond the pass. He made no assumptions. If the other side of the pass was an impassable gorge, so be it. He would have the tanks blast openings back into the tunnels if necessary, though he did not think it would be. When he looked down the mountain slope to his left, he could see the signs of other collapses, the echoes of explosions from centuries past. 'We go as far and as fast as we can,' he said. 'This is who we are.'

  '"The unplanned campaign is as futile as the inability to improvise",' Gage quoted.

  'I can't decide if I'm that memorable or you're that obsequious.'

  'Neither', said Gage. 'It’s the truth that's memorable.'

  Guilliman smiled. 'Exactly,' he said. 'You do understand, then. Leadership finds its value in truth, not the other way around. This is why no leader is irreplaceable.'

  Gage did not reply. No doubt he did not appreciate having his words come back to him in the form of that lesson. Guilliman took his silence as a sign of understanding. He did not protest, and that was all Guilliman asked of him.

  The pass was narrow, as if the peaks had been cleft by an immense axe. The speed of the column slowed as its width contracted. The tanks had to follow each other in single file. Between the vertical faces of the peaks, the penumbra of the sky became a strip of grey. As he pounded along scree and stretches of bare stone, Guilliman wondered again about the culture he had found in this narrow habitable zone of Thoas. The tunnels could well extend east, indefinitely, through the entire cordillera. Perhaps there were true arcologies to be found. The civilisation that had built the pyramids and the cave network had clearly been capable of constructing something on the order of Calth's underworld.

  He was struck, though, by the total absence of aboveground structures further east. The ones in this section were minor in comparison to what lay inside the mountains. Even so, they were monumental; easily detectable by the orbital augur scans. To the east, further into the dawn, there would be regions of endless gentle light and the most moderate temperatures on the planet.

  Yet there was nothing at the surface there. If the tunnels went on, that deep, would they have the same aspect as here, on the western edge of the cordillera? His initial evaluation of the pyramids as being part of a fortress seemed to have been correct. Everything in the tunnels and larger chambers was martial. He had seen nothing that suggested a use beyond the rapid transport of armies and the housing and maintenance of huge forces.

  Again, in defence of what? Where were the cultural artefacts of this civilisation? Where was anything except its empty shell of military defence?

  And yet again, against whom? The signs of ruinous war were everywhere, but no sign of the enemy that must have, in the end, triumphed over the Thoasians. There was only the emptiness, the hollow echo of a world now occupied by the opportunistic orks.

  The pass curved to the right, then opened up again. The Ultramarines emerged from between the peaks. The ridge sloped downwards, rather more steeply than it had risen to the south. A spire rose from the ground at the exit of the pass. It was a hundred and fifty feet tall. It leaned precipitously with the slope. The top was jagged. Stones from the demolished upper portion littered the slope. Its former use was obvious: from this vantage point, Guilliman had a clear perspective of every pyramid to the north. He could see the size of the horde laying siege to each position. The way forwards looked promising. The ridge was unbroken and its grade manageable all the way down to the nearest pyramid.

  Guilliman saw the means to make concrete his new narrative of the war, one he would impose on the hubris of the orks. The necessary revisions were becoming clear to him when Habron voxed him.

  'Tank fire in the northernmost pyramid,' Habron said. 'Against Chapter Master Iasus' orders.'

  'Who?'

  'Captain Sirras. Iasus is trying to get him to stop. The pyramid's structural integrity is weak. Sirras has disobeyed-'

  The groan cut Habron off. It cried out along the length of the mountain rage, bouncing off rock faces, gaining power and momentum as the upper half of the pyramid began to lean. It made a half-twist, a monument bowing to its unseen master. The groan turned into a thunderous roar as the pyramid collapsed. Its shape disappeared. It fell in on itself and the mountainside. The mountains seemed to shake as the stones smashed down on the orks and the slope below. The boom of the impact grew louder, becoming a greater, cracking thunder. The mountains really were shaking.

  'Sirras,' Guilliman muttered. 'What have you done?'

  The peak above the pyramid slumped. The movement was so vast it was deceptively slow. Tens of millions of tonnes of rock broke away. The mountain's face sloughed off. It slid down, a gigantic sweep of total destruction. The roar was the sound of the sky shattering. The silhouette of the mountain vanished in the billow of dust. The cloud raced across the mountain chain, swallowing the war. In less than a minute it reached Guilliman's position. Thoas disappeared into black limbo. The thunder would not stop.

  Guilliman stood in a choking void. He saw nothing. He heard nothing except the world's cry of pain. The war was gone. All narrative was gone. Everything had fallen into an abyss. There was no direction in which to march. There were no decisions possible.

  In the void, he was seized by a psychic vertigo. Everything melted away. There was no theoretical to construct. No practical to enact.

  There was nothing.

  Nothing.

  The vertigo was too strong. A catastrophe was unfolding, but

  his reaction went further than was warranted. Something deep within him, something he could not identify, was reacting to the dust-blindness. Look! it cried. Look! it demanded, roiling with impotent, desperate frustration. You do not see!

  No, he did not. There was nothing to see.

  Nothing.

  Except time. That still existed in this void. It was data, something that could be measured and had implications.

  Guilliman counted the seconds. He marked each minute, each painful period that his column was immobilised, unable to move forwards and bring reinforcements to the Chapters below. The seconds elapsed, the roar of the rockslide faded, and the limbo began to give way. The dust remained thick, but he could hear again the sound of war. In the positions closer to Guilliman, further from the 22nd Chapter's disaster, the struggles inside the tunnel network would not have been affected. The war was ongoing. The passing of each second changed the configuration of what Guilliman would encounter. The cost to his legionaries grew. The means he would have to employ to alter the outcome became more and more important. He did not know what actions he would take. He could not know. Yet he felt the scale alter, and he prepared.

&
nbsp; Theoretical: the force necessary to counter lost time increases exponentially with respect to the time.

  Practical: overwhelming force, employed from the start, reduces the degree of necessary adjustment.

  The seconds and the minutes passed. The dust began to settle. Guilliman waited. The downward slope became visible.

  'We can move forwards once more', said Gage.

  'No,' Guilliman answered. 'Not until we see the extent of the disaster. Knowledge is more important than speed at this juncture'

  He waited, the seconds and the minutes marching by. The initial stages of the disaster created enough interference to wreak havoc with the vox. Habron re-established contact now with the

  Chapter Masters and captains, except for Iasus. From within the fallen pyramid, all was silence. Guilliman listened to the updates. The new picture of the war began to form even as the cloud still covered everything but the upper peaks of the chain. Contact was sporadic with Empion and Banzor, commanding the Ninth and 16th Chapters in the strongpoint closest to Iasus' position. That was cause for concern. It was also information Guilliman could use. So when the dust finally cleared enough to reveal all, he was prepared for what he saw.

  The northern pyramid had disappeared completely, its location buried under the slide. The face of the mountain was exposed, revealing a network of tunnels as dense as a hive. Orks boiled out of the tunnels like an insect swarm. The horde flowed over the devastated landscape, making for the next base. That pyramid, though still standing, had lost a large portion of its northern face. On instinct, the orks were doing precisely what Guilliman had attempted. The thousands upon thousands of warriors would be added to the force already fighting the Ninth and 16th. The wave would grow larger with each position overtaken, washing back towards the south as it drowned the Ultramarines.

  My strategy reversed, Guilliman thought. He noted the irony. It did not amuse him.

  Theoretical: the orks must be countered with an equivalently larger force.

  There was no way for him to reach the interior of that pyramid in time.

  Practical: pull the Ninth and 16th back to the next pyramid south. Concede ground in order to mount a more powerful counter-attack.

  He voxed Empion and Banzor. It took several attempts before the Chapter Masters could speak. He explained what needed to be done. 'Can you withdraw?' he asked.

  'I cannot,' Banzor replied. 'The pressure from the interior is pushing us north.' His signal faded, fuzzed into static, then came back. He spoke through a filter of gunfire, 'are immobilised between the two primary hordes. And damage to the structure is limiting our movements even further.'

  'Empion?' Guilliman asked.

  'Doubtful. The collapses have been extensive here as well. Withdrawal might be possible, but...’

  'At great cost to the Sixteenth,' Guilliman finished.

  'Our formation is defensive,' Banzor said. 'The orks have us surrounded. Empion is relieving some pressure on our southern flank. Even with that, we are barely holding the orks back.'

  'Understood. Both Chapters will continue to fight as your situation dictates. You will not be alone long. Courage and honour.'

  He gazed at the landscape before him. Disaster had altered it. Disaster had also created opportunity. He would use Sirras' foolishness to reach his goal much sooner than would have been possible until now. Guilliman switched channels to speak to Gage and Habron. 'Bring in the gunships,' he told the Techmarine. 'All of them. I want an airlift of our forces to the north side of that pyramid.'

  ‘How deep in the tunnels is Banzor?' Gage asked.

  'It doesn't matter,' Guilliman said. 'We will fight the orks on the slope. We will destroy them there, and open the way for Banzor.'

  ‘Gunships re-routed,' Habron reported.

  'Good. Artillery, commence a bombardment on that slope. Disrupt ork movements until we arrive.'

  A minute later the Whirlwind and Basilisk tanks unleashed their anger. As the first of the Thunderhawks arrived, the rubble of the slide erupted with explosions. The missiles created a storm of flame and flying rock. The shells of the earthshaker cannons cratered the wounded land, turning boulders into powder. Orks vanished in every blast. They were everywhere on the land, and they died everywhere. The movement of the horde slowed. It was not enough. It was firing shells into a moving stream. But the disruption was real.

  The Thunderhawk Masali Spear landed on the slope before Guilliman. Its engines whined, eager to fly again as the assault ramp slammed to the ground. Guilliman charged up the ramp, leading the Invictarii. 'We drop between the artillery and the open wall of the pyramid,' Guilliman ordered on the command vox.

  Masali Spear rose to make room for the next gunship. It circled the landing zone, joined by one Thunderhawk after another. Guilliman slid back the side door of the troop hold. He stood in the centre of the opening, immovable in the shrieking wind, visible to every Ultramarine who turned his eyes skywards. He spoke to the Legion.

  'We are confronted with the result of error,' he said. 'Action without reason is self-defeating. See this moment, my sons. Learn from it. We respond to the irrational with reason, with analysis, and we march to victory. The orks are unreason. They cannot hope to win. They have no defence against our most powerful weapon. Reason. It is in your blood. It is our heritage from my Father. Be who we truly are. Let every shot and blow be governed by reason. Know yourselves and the impulse behind every action.'

  He paused as yet more gunships rose to join the squadron. The chorus of the engines was tremendous. The Thunderhawks formed a great storm, a cyclone of adamantium hulls and ablative ceramite armour. They circled, machines of terrible destruction transporting gods of annihilating war.

  'Look at us!' Guilliman shouted. 'We are my Father's judgement! We are the devastation of reasoned war!' As Masali Spear flew along the southern arc of its circular flight, he pointed to the north. 'Now!' he said. 'Now we show the orks the power they must fear!'

  As if given impulse by his arm, the Thunderhawks flew north, to where reason hammered the ground to dust.

  The icons in his lenses were nonsense. They flashed white through crimson. Iasus blinked them off and on several times. He managed

  to cycle the photolenses through to low light, and he could see again.

  The floor of the pyramid had collapsed into a lower tunnel complex. The walls had come down between them. The organisation of the network was destroyed. There was no way to tell the difference between a chamber and fused tunnels. He was surrounded by the chaos of broken stone. Slabs leaned in a jumble of diagonals or were heaped high upon each other, forbidding passage. The ceiling was ten feet high at most. In many places it was much lower. Rubble pressed in from above, heavy with the promise of further crushing falls.

  Iasus wasn't sure if he had been unconscious. His memory was jagged and full of gaps from the moment the pyramid caved in on itself. There had been weight and death and falling, and a colossal hammer of darkness. Now the gloom was lit by guttering flames. There were no more explosions. He smelled promethium. A few yards to his right was the wreckage of a Land Raider. It had saved his life. It had been destroyed by the rock fall, but it had held the rubble far enough from the ground to spare him.

  'Captains of the Twenty-second Chapter,' he voxed. 'Respond.' There was no answer.

  He switched to an open channel, and called to any survivors of the 22nd. One by one at first, then in clusters, his legionaries answered.

  So few? he thought.

  'Form up on me,' Iasus said. He made his way forwards to a fallen monolith. There was just enough room between its peak and the ceiling for him to stand upright. It was the closest he could see to high ground. Ork blood oozed from beneath it. Iasus could hear snarls coming from some distance in the gloom. In his vicinity, he saw nothing apart from smashed greenskin bodies. The only survivors here had been wearing power armour.

  Even so, he wondered how many were left.

  'Loxias,' Iasus voxed.

&
nbsp; 'Chapter Master.' The Techmarine's voice was suffused with pain.

  'Where are you?'

  'I am unable to determine that. In any event, the question is moot. I am still in Praxis.'

  'It survived?'

  'It did not.'

  'I see.'

  'I am pinned, Chapter Master. The lower half of my body is not viable. I believe the Rhino is buried. I may be able to restore some systems' functionality. I am working on that now.'

  Shadows moved through the maze of rubble towards Iasus. The survivors of the 221st Company gathered at his location. 'Communications?' Iasus asked Loxias. The vox signals were erratic. He had tried calling to the other Chapters and heard nothing. He suspected proximity was the only thing permitting contact with the remnants of the 221st.

  'I believe so.'

  'Is there anything from Captain Sirras or the 223rd?' Iasus had tried several times already.

  'The auspex is working',Loxias said. ‘No life signs detected above this region. The destruction appears to have been total.’

  'Thank you, Loxias. If you can restore communications with the rest of the Legion...'

  'You will be the first to know.'

  Iasus scanned the legionaries around him. There were fewer than a hundred. Their squads were fragmentary. Iasus saw only two squads that appeared to have their full complement of warriors. 'Brothers,' he said. 'We are reduced in numbers, but not in effectiveness. We adapt and do what we must. That is our culture. That is our strength.'

  'What are your orders, Chapter Master?' asked a legionary in the armour of a tactical veteran.

  Iasus searched his memory for the Ultramarine's name.

  'Burrus,' he said, 'we shall make our way out and join the other Chapters' Burrus nodded. 'Out where?'