Helsreach

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  The Abandoned Crusade

  Ryken was not smiling.

  He’d been a lifelong believer in not shooting the messenger, but today that tradition was in danger of expiring. Behind him loomed an anti-air turret, blanketing them all in its shadow and shielding them from the dim glare of the morning sun. A squad of his men worked on this turret, as they had worked on countless others along the walls in the space of the last two months. It was almost operational. They weren’t techs, by any means, but they knew the basic maintenance rites and calibration rituals.

  ‘One minute to test fire,’ Vantine said, her voice muffled by her rebreather mask.

  And that was when the messenger showed up. It was also when Ryken stopped smiling, despite the fact the messenger was easy on the eyes, as over-starched, narrowed-eyed tactica types went.

  ‘I want these orders rechecked,’ he demanded – calmly, but a demand nevertheless.

  ‘With all due respect, sir,’ the messenger straightened her own ochre uniform, ‘these orders come from the Old Man himself. He’s reorganising the disposition of all our forces, and the Steel Legion are honoured to be first in that reappraisal.’

  The words stole Ryken’s desire to argue. So it was true, then. The Old Man was back.

  ‘But Helsreach is half a continent away,’ he tried. ‘We’ve been working on the Hades wall-guns for months.’

  ‘Thirty seconds to test fire,’ Vantine called.

  The messenger, whose name was Cyria Tyro, wasn’t smiling either. In her position as adjutant quintus to General Kurov, grunts and plebeians were forever questioning the orders she relayed, as if she would ever dare alter a single word of the general’s instructions. The other adjutants had no difficulties in this area, she was sure of it. For some unknown reason, these lowborn dregs just simply didn’t take well to her. Perhaps they were jealous of her position? If so, then they were more foolish than she’d have given them credence for.

  ‘I have long been entrusted with certain aspects of the general’s plans,’ Tyro lied, ‘that frontliners such as yourself are only now being made aware of. I apologise if this is a surprise to you, major, but orders are orders. And these orders come with the highest mandate imaginable.’

  ‘Are we not even going to defend the damn hive?’

  At that moment, Vantine test-fired the turret. The floor beneath their feet shook as four cannon barrels blared their anger up at the empty sky. Ryken swore, though it was drowned out in the ear-ringing thunder of the gun’s echo. Tyro also swore, though unlike Ryken’s general lament, hers was aimed at Vantine and the gun crew.

  The major was close to yelling over the ache in his ears. It was fading, but not fast.

  ‘I said, are we not even going to defend the damn hive?’

  ‘You are not,’ Tyro almost pouted, her mouth compressed in restrained irritation. ‘You are going to Helsreach with your regiment. Your transports leave tonight. All of the 101st Steel Legion is to be aboard and ready for transport by sunset in six point five hours.’

  Ryken paused. Six and a half hours to get three thousand men and women into heavy lifter transports, gunships and land trains. It was the kind of bad news that made the major feel the need to be overwhelmingly honest.

  ‘Colonel Sarren is going to be furious.’

  ‘Colonel Sarren has dealt with this assignment with grace and solemn devotion to his duty, major. Your commanding officer still has much to teach you in that regard, I see.’

  ‘Cute. Now tell me why it’s us being sent all the way to Helsreach. I thought Insan and the 121st were kings of that shitpile.’

  ‘Colonel Insan had a terminal failure of his augmetic heart infusers this morning. His second officer requested Sarren by name, and General Kurov agreed.’

  ‘That old bastard’s finally dead? That’ll teach him to lay off the garage-brewed sauce. Ha! All those expensive augmetics he had done, and he keels over six months later. I like that. That’s delicious.’

  ‘Major! Some respect, if you please.’

  Ryken frowned. ‘I don’t like you,’ he told Tyro.

  ‘How grievous,’ the general’s assistant replied, and there was no mistaking the dark, unamused scowl on her face. ‘For you have been appointed a liaison to aid in dealings with the Astartes and the conscripted militia.’ She looked as if she’d eaten something sour and it was still wriggling on her tongue. ‘So… I will be coming with you.’

  A moment of curious kinship passed between them, almost going unspoken. They were being exiled to the same place, after all. Their eyes met in that moment, and the foundations of something like a reluctant friendship almost bloomed between them.

  It was broken when Ryken walked away.

  ‘I still don’t like you.’

  ‘Hades Hive will not survive the first week.’

  The man speaking is ancient, and he looks every hour of his age. What keeps him on his feet is a mixture of minimal rejuvenat chem-surgeries, crude bionics, and a faith in the Emperor founded in hatred for the enemies of Man.

  I liked him the moment my visor’s targeting reticules locked onto him. Both piety and hate echo in his every word.

  He should not hold rank here – not to the degree he does. He is merely a commissar in the Imperial Guard, and such a title does not tend to make generals, colonels, Astartes captains and Chapter Masters remain in polite silence when it comes to tactical planning. Yet to the humans at this war council, and the citizens of Armageddon, he is the Old Man, a beloved hero of the Second War fifty-seven years ago.

  Not just a hero. The hero.

  His name is Sebastian Yarrick. Even we Astartes must respect that name.

  And when he tells us all that Hades Hive will be destroyed within a matter of days, a hundred Imperial commanders, human and Astartes alike, hang on his every word.

  I am one of them. This will be my first true command.

  Commissar Sebastian Yarrick leans over the edge of a hololithic display table. With his remaining hand – the other arm is nothing but a stump – he keys in coordinates on the numeric datapad, and the hololith projection of Hades Hive widens with flickering impatience to display both of the planet’s hemispheres in insignificant detail.

  The Old Man, a gaunt and wizened human of sharp features and skeletally-obvious facial bones, gestures to the blip on the map that represents Hades Hive and its surrounding territories. Wastelands, in the main.

  ‘Six decades ago,’ he says, ‘the Great Enemy met his defeat at Hades. Our defence here was what won us that war.’

  There are general murmurs of assent. The commissar’s voice carries around the expansive chamber through floating skull drones equipped with vox-speakers where their jaws had once been.

  I am surrounded by the familiar hum of active power armour, though the scents and faces that meet my eyes are new to me. Standing to my left at a respectful distance, his face raggedly proud around extensive bionics, is Chapter Master Seth of the Flesh Tearers – known to his men as the Guardian of the Rage. He smells of sacred weapon oils, his primarch’s potent blood running beneath his weathered skin, and the spicy, unwholesome reptilian scent of the lizard predator-kings that stalk the jungles of his home world. Seth is flanked by his own officers, each one bareheaded and with faces as pitted and cracked as their master’s. Whatever wars have occupied the Flesh Tearers in recent decades, the conflicts have not been kind to them.

  To my left, my liege Helbrecht stands resplendent in his battle armour of black and bronze. Bayard, the Emperor’s Champion, is by his side. Both rest their helmets on the table’s surface, the stern helms distorting the edge of the hololithic display, and give their full attention to the ancient commissar.

  I cross my arms over my chest and do the same.

  ‘Why?’ someone asks. Their voice is low, too low to be human, and carries over the chamber without the need of vox-amplification. A hundred heads turn to regard an Astartes in the bright red-orange of a lesser Chapter, one unknown to me. He steps forwa
rd, leaning his knuckles on the table, facing Yarrick from almost twenty metres distance.

  ‘We recognise Brother-Captain Amaras,’ an Imperial herald announces from his position at Yarrick’s side, smoothing the formal blue robes of his office. He bangs the butt of his staff on the ground three times. ‘Commander of the Angels of Fire.’

  Amaras nods in thanks, and fixes Yarrick with his unblinking gaze.

  ‘Why would the greenskin warlord simply annihilate the greatest battlefield of the last war? Surely our forces should muster at Hades and stand ready to defend against the largest assault.’

  Murmurs of agreement ripple throughout the gathered commanders. Emboldened, Amaras smiles at Yarrick.

  ‘We are the Emperor’s Chosen, mortal. We are His Angels of Death. We have centuries of battle experience compared to these human commanders at your side.’

  ‘No,’ another voice replies. This one is distorted into a vox-born snarl, filtered through a helm’s speakers. I swallow as the herald bangs the staff another three times.

  I had not realised I’d spoken out loud.

  ‘We recognise Brother-Chaplain Grimaldus,’ he calls out. ‘Reclusiarch of the Black Templars.’

  Grimaldus shook his head at the gathered commanders. Over a hundred, human and Astartes, all standing around the huge table in this converted auditorium once used for whatever dreary theatre performances occurred on a manufactory world. A riot of colours, heraldry, symbols of unity, varied uniforms, regimental designations and iconography. General Kurov stood at the commissar’s shoulder, deferring to the Old Man in all things.

  ‘The xenos do not think as we do,’ Grimaldus said. ‘The greenskins do not come to Armageddon for vengeance, or to seek to bleed us for the defeats they have suffered at Imperial hands in the past. They come for the pleasure of violence.’

  Yarrick, a skeleton wreathed in pale flesh and a dark uniform, watched the knight in silence. Amaras pounded his fist onto the table and pointed at the Templar. For a moment of deathly calm, Grimaldus considered drawing his pistol and slaying him where he stood.

  ‘That lends credence to my belief,’ Amaras almost snarled.

  ‘Not at all. Have you inspected what remains of Hades Hive? It is a ruin. There is nothing to fight over, nothing to defend. The Great Enemy knows this. He will be aware that Imperial forces will put up no more than a token resistance here, and fall back to defend hives that are still worth defending. It is likely the warlord will obliterate Hades from orbit, rather than seek to take it.’

  ‘We cannot let this hive fall! It is a symbol of mankind’s defiance! With respect, Chaplain–’

  ‘Enough,’ Yarrick said. ‘Peace, Brother-Captain Amaras. Grimaldus speaks with wisdom.’

  Grimaldus inclined his head in thanks.

  ‘I will not be silenced by a mortal,’ Amaras growled, but the fight was gone from him. Yarrick – the thin, ancient commissar – just stared at the Astartes captain. After several moments, Amaras looked back to the hololithic topography around the hive. Yarrick turned back to the gathered officers, his one human eye stern and his augmetic one whirring in its socket as it refocussed on the faces before him.

  ‘Hades will not survive the first week,’ he said again, this time shaking his head. ‘We must abandon the hive and spread the forces here to other bastions of strength. This is not the Second War. What is coming in-system now far exceeds what has laid waste to the planet before. The other hives must be reinforced a thousand times over.’ He took a moment to clear his throat, and a cough stole over him, dry and hoarse. When it subsided, the Old Man smiled without even the ghost of humour.

  ‘Hades will burn. We must make our stand elsewhere.’

  At this cue, General Kurov stepped forward with a data-slate.

  ‘We come to the divisions of command.’ He took a breath, and pressed on. ‘The fleet that will besiege Armageddon is too vast to repel.’

  A chorus of jeers rose. Kurov rode them out. Grimaldus, Helbrecht and Bayard were among those that remained absolutely silent.

  ‘Hear me, friends and brothers,’ Kurov sighed. ‘And hear me well. Those of you who insist this war will be anything more than a conflict of bitter attrition are deceiving yourselves. At current estimates, we have over fifty thousand Astartes in the Armageddon subsector, and thirty times the number of Imperial Guardsmen. And it will still not be enough to secure a clean victory. At our best estimations, Battlefleet Armageddon, the orbital defences, and the Astartes fleets remaining in the void will be able to deny the enemy landing for nine days. These are our best estimates.’

  ‘And the worst?’ asked an Astartes officer bedecked in white wolf furs, wearing the grey war plate of the Space Wolves. His body language betrayed his impatience. He almost paced, like a canine in a cage.

  ‘Four days,’ the Old Man said through his grim smile.

  Silence descended again. Kurov didn’t waste it.

  ‘Admiral Parol of Battlefleet Armageddon has outlined his plan and uploaded it to the tactical network for all commanders to review. Once the orbital war is lost, be it four days or nine, our fleets will break from the planet in a fighting withdrawal. From then on, Armageddon will be defenceless beyond what is already entrenched upon the surface. The orks will be free to land whatever and wherever they wish.

  ‘Admiral Parol will lead the remaining Naval ships of the fleet in repeated guerrilla strikes against the invaders’ vessels still in orbit.’

  ‘Who will lead the Astartes vessels?’ Captain Amaras spoke up again.

  There was another pause, before Commissar Yarrick nodded to a dark-armoured cluster of warriors across the table.

  ‘Given his seniority and the expertise of his Chapter, High Marshal Helbrecht of the Black Templars will take overall command of the Astartes fleets.’

  And once more, there was uproar, several Astartes commanders demanding that the glory be theirs. The knights ignored it.

  ‘We are to remain in orbit?’ Grimaldus leaned closer to his commander and voiced the question.

  The High Marshal didn’t take his eyes from Yarrick. ‘We are the obvious choice to command the Astartes elements in the orbital battles.’

  The Chaplain looked across the chamber, at the various leaders and officers of a hundred different forces.

  I was wrong, he thought. I will not die in futility on this world. Eagerness, hot and urgent, flushed through his system, as real and vital as a flood of adrenaline gushing through his two hearts.

  ‘The Crusader will plunge like a lance into the core of their fleet. High Marshal, we can slaughter the greenskin tyrant before he even sets foot on the world below us.’

  Helbrecht lifted his gaze from the ancient commissar as his Chaplain spoke. He turned to Grimaldus, his dark eyes piercing the other knight’s skull mask with their intensity.

  ‘I have already spoken with the other marshals, my brother. We must leave a contingent on the surface. I will lead the orbital crusade. Amalrich and Ricard will lead the forces in the Ash Wastes. All that remains is a single crusade, to defend one of the hive cities that yet remains ungarrisoned by Astartes.’

  Grimaldus shook his head. ‘That is not our duty, my liege. Both Amalrich and Ricard have a host of honours inscribed upon their armour. Each has led greater crusades alone. Neither will relish an exile to a filthy manufactorum hive while a thousand of their brothers wage a glorious war in the heavens. You would shame them.’

  ‘And yet,’ Helbrecht was implacable, his features set in stone, ‘a commander must remain.’

  ‘Don’t.’ The knight’s blood ran cold. ‘Don’t do this.’

  ‘It is already done.’

  ‘No,’ he said, and meant it with every fibre of his being. ‘No.’

  ‘This is not the time. The decision is made, Grimaldus. I know you, as I knew Mordred. You will not refuse this honour.’

  ‘No,’ Grimaldus said again, loud enough that other commanders began to stare.

  Helbrecht said nothing. Gri
maldus stepped closer to him.

  ‘I would burst the Great Enemy’s black heart in my hand, and cast his blasphemous flagship to the surface of Armageddon wreathed in holy fire. Do not leave me here, Helbrecht. Do not deny me this glory.’

  ‘You will not refuse this honour,’ the High Marshal said, his voice as stony as his face.

  Grimaldus wanted no further part in the proceedings. Worse, he knew he was irrelevant here. As deliberations and tactics were discussed for the coming orbital defence, he turned from the hololithic display.

  ‘Wait, brother.’ Helbrecht’s voice made it a request, not an order, and that made it easy to refuse.

  Grimaldus stalked from the chamber without another word.

  Their destination was called, with bleakness so typical of this world, Helsreach.

  ‘Blood of Dorn,’ Artarion swore with feeling. ‘Now that’s a sight.’

  ‘This is… huge,’ Nerovar whispered.

  The four Thunderhawks tore across the sulphurous sky, parting sick yellow clouds that drifted apart in their wake. From the cockpit of the lead aircraft, six knights watched the expansive city below.

  And expansive barely covered it.

  The four gunships, boosters howling, veered in graceful unison around one of the tallest industrial spires. It was slate-grey, belching thick smoke into the dirty sky, merely one of hundreds.

  A wing of escorts, small and manoeuvrable Lightning-pattern air superiority fighters, coasted alongside the Astartes Thunderhawks. They were neither welcome nor unwelcome, merely ignored.

  ‘We cannot be the only Astartes strength sent to this city,’ Nerovar removed his white helmet with a hiss of venting air pressure and stared with naked eyes at the metropolis flashing beneath. ‘How can we hold this alone?’

  ‘We will not be alone,’ Sergeant Bastilan said. ‘The Guard is with us. And militia forces.’

  ‘Humans,’ Priamus sneered.

  ‘The Legio Invigilata has landed to the east of the city,’ Bastilan said to the swordsman. ‘Titans, my brother. I don’t see you sneering at that.’

  Priamus didn’t answer. But nor did he agree.