Helsreach

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  ‘Now, you ass, come on!’ Tyro dragged at his shoulder. It threw off his aim, but to hell with it – it was like spitting into the ocean anyway. He scrambled away from the relative cover of the weeping statue just in time to miss it being shattered into chips and shards by raking fire from a fully-automatic enemy stubber.

  ‘Are they coming?’ he shouted to his second officer, limping badly now.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The bloody Templars!’

  They were not coming.

  To the retreating human survivors, it seemed as if the black knights had lost all sense, all reason, cutting their way forward while the humans that had supported them broke ranks and fled back.

  No one could see why.

  No one was getting a clear answer from the vox.

  Bayard was dead.

  Priamus saw the great champion fall, and all flair in his killing strokes was abandoned in a heartbeat. He slew with all the grace of a peasant chopping lumber upon the face of some backwater rural world, his masterwork sword reduced to a club with a vicious edge and draped in lethal energy.

  ‘Nerovar!’ he screamed his brother’s name into the vox. ‘Nerovar!’

  Other Templars took up the cry, summoning the Apothecary to extract the gene-seed of a Chapter hero.

  Bayard stood almost slouched against the wall of an ornate mausoleum shaped from pink-veined white stone. The body had not fallen only because of the crude spear pinning it through the throat. A killing blow, without a shadow of doubt. Priamus spared a moment of desperate blocks and thrusts, taking an axe blow against his pauldron, risking a second’s distraction to pull the spear free. The ork’s axe threw off sparks as it crashed aside from the ceramite shoulder guard. The corpse of the Emperor’s Champion slumped to the ground, freed of its undignified need to stand.

  ‘Nerovar!’ Priamus cried again.

  It was Bastilan that reached him first. The sergeant’s helm was gone, revealing a face so bloody only the whites of his eyeballs revealed him as human anymore. Torn flaps of skin hung in wet patches, leaving his head open to the bone beneath.

  ‘The Black Sword!’

  Priamus deflected another dozen cuts in four beats of his pounding twin hearts. He had no time to reach for the blessed weapon Bayard had dropped in death.

  Bastilan’s ruined face vanished in a burst of red mist. Priamus had already rammed his power sword through the chest of the bolter-wielding ork behind the sergeant by the time Bastilan’s headless body crashed to the ground with the dull clang of ceramite on stone.

  ‘Nerovar!’

  With Bastilan’s last words, something changed within the Templars.

  Twelve remained. Of these, only seven would escape what followed.

  The knights pulled together, their blades slashing and carving not only to kill their foes, but to defend their brothers alongside them. It was an instinctive savagery born of so many decades fighting at each others’ sides, and it spread through their failing ranks now as they stood on the precipice of destruction.

  ‘Take the sword!’ Grimaldus roared. His charge carried him ahead of the others, hammering his crozius in arhythmic fury, smashing a bloody path through to Priamus. ‘Recover the Black Sword!’

  We cannot leave it here. It cannot lie abandoned on a battlefield while one of us yet lives.

  Over the vox, the humans are calling us insane and begging us to fall back with them. To them, this bloodshed must seem like madness, but there is no choice. We will not be the only Crusade to violate our most sacred tradition. The Black Sword will remain in black hands until there are none left to bear it.

  I have a moment – just a single moment – of reflexive pain when I see Bayard’s body next to Bastilan’s. Two of the finest Sword Brethren ever to serve the Chapter, now slain in glory. More alien bodies block my view. More xenos bleed as I force my way closer to Priamus.

  A sense of bloodthirsty, eerie calm descends between us. The battle rages, weapons clashing against our armour, but I speak in a fierce whisper that I know carries over the vox to him and him alone.

  ‘Priamus.’

  ‘Reclusiarch.’

  My maul sends two of the beasts flying back, and for a heartbeat’s span, there are no alien barbarians separating us. Our eye lenses meet for that precious second, before we are both forced to turn and engage other foes.

  ‘You are the last Emperor’s Champion of the Helsreach Crusade,’ I tell him. ‘Now recover your blade.’

  Major Ryken spoke into his hand-vox, repeating the same words he’d been saying for almost a minute. His voice echoed around the nave in curiously calm counterpoint to the ragged breathing and moans of pain from the wounded.

  ‘Any armour units still outside the basilica, respond. The Godbreaker has been sighted due south of the temple walls. Any armour units still outside, engage, engage.’

  From his viewpoint by one of the broken stained glass windows, he watched the gargant’s torso rising above the broken graveyard walls in the distance.

  He didn’t recognise the voice that eventually answered. It sounded both bitter and disgusted, but it still made Ryken grin.

  ‘Engaging.’

  ‘Hello? Identify yourself!’

  ‘I am Princeps Amasat of the Warlord Titan Bane-Sidhe.’

  The Bane-Sidhe, named for a shrieking monster from ancient Terran mythology, did everything in its power to gain the Godbreaker’s attention. Opening salvos from its arm-cannons and shoulder-mounted weapon batteries lashed against the larger Titan’s force fields. Siren horns, used to warn loyal infantry of the Titan’s passing close – or even through – their regiments, blared now at the enemy engine. Whatever primitive communications array passed for a vox system on board the Godbreaker was scrambled into white noise by a focussed spike of machine-code from Bane-Sidhe’s tech-adepts.

  All of this was enough to drag the towering beast-machine away from its intent to flatten the Temple of the Emperor Ascendant.

  The Warlord, thirty-three metres of armour plating and city-killing weaponry forged into an iconic image of the Machine-God Himself, began its shameful retreat. All guns fired at will as it clanked backwards, drawing the Godbreaker away from the last Imperials alive in the hive’s most sacred sector.

  ‘May I have a weapon, please?’

  Andrej shrugged as he cleaned his goggles with a dirty cloth. ‘I have no other pistol, fat priest. For this, I apologise.’

  Tomaz Maghernus shook his head when Asavan looked his way. ‘I don’t, either.’

  Several maidens of the Order of the Argent Shroud came down the wide stairs into the undercroft. Prioress Sindal led them, carrying her bolter with ease due to the machine-muscles of her power armour.

  ‘It is time to seal the undercroft,’ the old woman said, her voice low. She, at least, knew the merits of not panicking the refugees gathered in the sublevel. ‘The beasts have reached the inner grounds.’

  ‘May I have a weapon, please?’ Asavan asked her.

  ‘Have you ever fired a bolter?’

  ‘Until this month, I had never even seen a bolter. Nevertheless, I would like a weapon with which to defend these people.’

  ‘Father, with the greatest respect, it would do you no good. My thanks for comforting the flock, but it is time to prepare for the end. Everyone who is staying behind, be ready to be sealed down here within the next three minutes. The oxygen should last a month, as long as the xenos do not destroy the air filtration systems above ground.’

  Andrej raised a singed eyebrow. ‘And if they do?’

  ‘Use your imagination, Guardsman. And return to the surface, quickly. Every able body is needed in defence of the temple.’

  ‘A moment, please.’ Andrej turned back to Asavan. ‘Fat priest. You are destined to either survive this, or die at least some time later than I.’ He handed the holy man a small leather pouch. Asavan took it, clutching it tight in fingers that would have trembled in this moment only weeks before.

  ‘What is
this?’

  ‘My mother’s wedding ring, and a letter of explanation. Once this is over, if you are still drawing breath, please find Trooper Natalina Domoska of the 91st Steel Elite. You will recognise her – this, I promise to you. She is the most beautiful woman in the world. Every man says so.’

  ‘Move, young man,’ the prioress insisted.

  Andrej snapped a crisp salute to the overweight priest, and made his way back up the stairs, his laspistol held in both hands. Maghernus followed him, casting a lingering look back at Asavan and the refugees. He waved as the underground bulkheads slammed closed. Asavan didn’t seem to see, preoccupied with the refugees who were rising to their feet in panic and protest.

  Several of the battle-sisters remained at the base of the stairs, entering codes to seal the doors and imprison the civilians away from harm. The prioress managed to keep up with Andrej and Maghernus. The dockmaster smiled at her, knowing the gesture was meaningless and filled with melancholy. She returned the smile, her expression carrying the same emotions as his. The Temple was shaking as the orks battered at its walls.

  The next time Maghernus would see Prioress Sindal of the Order of the Argent Shroud, she would be a mangled corpse in three pieces, spread across the floor of the inner sanctum.

  That would be in less than one hour’s time, and her body would be one of the last things he saw before he was killed by a bolt round in the back.

  Bane-Sidhe tore clean through the Hel’s Highway when it fell.

  The Warlord had made it half a kilometre before its void shields burst out of existence and its front-facing armour began to suffer the assault from the Godbreaker’s guns. No matter how thick the ceramite and adamantium plating covering the Warlord’s vital systems, the sheer level of firepower hurled at Bane-Sidhe meant that once its shields died, its existence was measured in minutes.

  It was perhaps unfair that such a noble example of the Invigilata’s god-machines met its end as a sacrificial lure, but within the Legio’s archives, both Bane-Sidhe and her command crew were given the highest honours. The wreckage of the Titan would come to be salvaged by the Mechanicus in the following weeks, and restored to working order fourteen months later. Its destruction at Helsreach was marked upon its carapace with a six-metre square engraved image upon its right shin, depicting a weeping angel over a burning, metallic skeleton.

  Unable to withstand any more punishment, with flames pouring from its bridge, the great Warlord fell backwards on howling joints. Its immense weight was enough to break the rockcrete columns holding up the Hel’s Highway, sending the Bane-Sidhe and a significant section of the main road crashing down to land in a mountain of rubble.

  The Godbreaker stood over the crater of broken road, as if staring down at the body of its latest kill.

  Fourteen seconds after the Warlord’s shattered remains came to a rest, a flare of sun-bright and fusion-hot energy screamed across the Hel’s Highway. It was the shape of a newborn star, flaring with arcing coils of plasma light and surrounded by a blinding corona.

  The Godbreaker’s shields disintegrated at the sunfire’s touch. Its armour disintegrated mere seconds later, as did its crew, skeletal structure, and all evidence that it had ever existed.

  Jurisian drooled through clenched teeth, feeling the untamed machine-spirit’s quivering rage at being used without being ritually blessed and activated via the correct rituals. As the knifing pain in his skull faded to tolerable levels, he opened a vox-link to Grimaldus, and breathed two words.

  They were laden with both agony and meaning – symbolising the completion of his duty, and a final farewell.

  ‘Engine kill,’ he said.

  ‘The Godbreaker is dead,’ Grimaldus voxed to anyone still listening to the comms channels. The news brought no relief to him, and no joy, even for thought of Jurisian’s glory. There was nothing now beyond the next second of battle. Step by step, the Reclusiarch and his last brothers were pushed backwards through the basilica, room by room, hall by hall.

  The air reeked of alien breath, spilled innards and the sharp overcooked ozone sent of las-fire.

  The walls still shook as xenos tanks shelled the holy temple even while their own forces stormed through it.

  A young girl in Argent Shroud battle armour was cut down, wailing as she was disembowelled by the horde. Artarion’s two blades, both inactive from meat-clogging and no more use than jagged clubs, ripped across the face and throat of the girl’s killer. Then he too was beaten back by the four beasts that took the dead brute’s place.

  A voice rose above the carnage – harsh and enraged.

  ‘Kill them all! Let none survive! Never has an alien defiled this holiest of places!’

  Grimaldus dragged the closest ork against him, gripping its throat and thudding his skulled helm against its face to shatter its hideous bone structure. The voice was the prioress’s, and he realised now where he was.

  No.

  No, how could it all be over already?

  We have been beaten back to the inner sanctum in mere hours. Sindal’s cries of defiance have the worst effect: they awaken everyone from the mindless heat of battle and bloodshed, dragging us back to face the truth.

  The inner sanctum is a gore-slick mess of heaving, slashing, shooting humans and orks. We are beaten. No one in this room is going to survive more than a few more minutes. Already, others have sensed this and I see them through the crowd, trying to run from the room, seeking a way past the orks rather than lay down their lives at the last stand.

  Militia. Civilians. Guard. Even several storm-troopers. Half of our pathetic remaining force is breaking from the battle and trying to run.

  With my hand still at the ork’s throat, I drag the kicking beast up with me, standing atop the Major Altar. The beast struggles, but its clawing is weak with its skull broken and its senses disoriented by pain.

  My plasma pistol is long gone, torn from me at some point in the last two days of battle. The chain remains. I wrap it around the beast’s throat, and roar my words to the painted ceiling as I strangle the creature in full view of everyone in the room.

  ‘Take heart, brothers! Fight in the Emperor’s name!’ The beast thrashes as it dies, claws scraping in futility at my ruined armour. I tense my grip, feeling the creature’s thick spinal bones begin to click and break. Its piggish eyes are wide with terror, and this… this makes me laugh.

  ‘I have dug my grave in this place…’ An explosive round detonates on my shoulder, blasting shards of armour free. I see Priamus kill the shooter with the Black Sword in a one-handed grip.

  ‘I have dug my grave in this place, and I will either triumph or I will die!’

  Five knights still live, and they roar as I roar.

  ‘No pity! No remorse! No fear!’

  The walls shudder as if kicked by a Titan. For a moment, still laughing, I wonder if the Godbreaker has returned.

  ‘Until the end, brothers!’

  The cry is taken up by those of us that yet draw breath, and we fight on.

  ‘They’re bringing the temple down!’ Priamus calls, and there is something wrong with his voice. I realise what it is when I see my brother is missing an arm and his leg armour is pierced in three places.

  I have never heard him in pain before.

  ‘Nero!’ he screams. ‘Nerovar!’

  The beasts are primitive, but they are not devoid of intelligence and cunning. Nero’s white markings signal him as an Apothecary, and they know of his value to humanity. Priamus sees him first, two dozen metres away through the melee. An alien spear has punched its way through his stomach, and several of the beasts are lifting him from the ground, raising him like a war banner above the carnage.

  Nerovar dies like no warrior I have ever seen before. Even as I try to kill my way closer to him, I see him gripping the spear in his fists, hauling himself down the weapon, impaling himself deeper on it in an attempt to reach the aliens below.

  He has no bolter, no chainblade. His last act in l
ife is to draw his gladius from its sheath at his thigh and hurl it down with a Templar’s vengeance at the ork with the best grip on the spear. He’d dragged himself down to get close enough to ensure he wouldn’t miss. The short sword bit true, sinking into the beast’s gaping maw and rewarding the xenos with an agonising death, choking on a sword blade that had ravaged its throat, tongue and lungs. With the beast unable to keep hold, the spear falls and Nero plunges into a seething mass of greenskins.

  I never see him again.

  Priamus, one-armed and faltering now, staggers ahead of me. A detonating round crashes against his helm, spinning him back to face me.

  ‘Grimaldus,’ he says, before falling to his knees. ‘Brother…’

  Flames engulf him from the side – clinging chemical fire that washes over his armour, eating into the soft joints and dissolving the flesh beneath. The ork with the flamer pans the weapon left and right, dousing Priamus in corrosive fire.

  I am hammering my way with painful slowness to avenge him when Artarion’s blade bursts from the ork’s chest. He kicks the dying ork from his broken chainsword. With vengeance taken, my standard bearer turns with as much grace as can be salvaged in this butchery, and his back slams against mine.

  ‘Goodbye, brother.’ He’s laughing as he says the words, and I do not know why, but it brings out my own laughter.

  Blocks of the ceiling are falling now, crushing those beneath. The orks in here with us, paying for every human life with five of their own, pay no heed to their kin outside damning them by destroying the temple with them still inside.

  Not far from the altar, I catch a final glimpse of the storm-trooper and the dockmaster. The former stands above the dying latter, Andrej defending the gut-shot Maghernus while he tries to comprehend what to do with his bowels looping across his lap and the floor nearby.

  ‘Artarion,’ I call to him, to return the farewell, but there is no answer. The presence against my back is not my brother.

  I turn, laughing at the madness before me. Artarion is dead at my feet, headless, defiled. The enemy drive me to my knees, but even this is no more than a bad joke. They are doomed as surely as I am.