The Crimson Fist

by John French

  ‘Forrix says that full deployment will be complete in twenty-seven minutes.’ Perturabo turned to look at Berossus, the green slot eyes of his helm glowing above the plough-shaped snout; Berossus swallowed, even though he knew that the estimate was precisely in line with Forrix’s previous calculations.

  Around the Iron Blood hundreds of warships followed in close formation. Behind them hundreds more pulled themselves from the warp to add to the Iron Warriors fleet. Months ago scout units had captured details of the Imperial Fists fleet, each capturing a single snapshot of data and pushing it into the mind of the astropath slaved to each machine. The psykers’ death screams had cut through the storms, carrying dream images of the Imperial Fists fleet. They had used that data to plan, and that plan was a timetable for obliteration. Berossus knew that the battle was progressing as intended, but under his master’s gaze he wondered whether that was enough.

  Perturabo turned his back to the view. At a gesture, the blast doors began to shut over the fire-spattered vacuum.

  ‘Tell Golg to push the vanguard harder. The rest of the fleet can finish what he leaves.’

  Berossus averted his gaze and knelt even lower as Perturabo spoke. ‘Yes, master.’

  ‘Scour the Imperial Fists signals. Find where Sigismund lurks.’ Perturabo pulled his helmet off as the blast doors sealed and atmosphere hissed into the hold. Berossus glanced up and wished he had not.

  ‘Yes, master,’ said Berossus, his gaze again on the frost-sheened deck.

  ‘He is to be found, not killed,’ rasped Perturabo. ‘His death is mine.’

  The killing continued with murderous rhythm. The ships at the front of the Iron Warriors fleet had begun to split into groups to hunt smaller Imperial Fists ships. Behind them fresh arrivals advanced in a tight block. These were the macro-vessels, vast cliff-sided ships filled with battalions of Iron Warriors and thousands of slave troops. Beside them lurked the hell burners. Old system ships, orbital haulers and tugs, they had ridden through the warp on tethers behind the macro-ships. Unstable plasma fuel and munitions filled each of the ramshackle craft. Their slave crews, lobotomised into blind obedience, drove the hell burners into the throats of the Imperial Fists guns. Many detonated before they reached their victims, but more did not. Chains of explosions formed glowing nebulae that hung in the void like lava clotting in water.

  The Imperial Fists ships that emerged from these infernos were half dead, their armour peeling from their superstructure, their weapons blind. The macro-vessels poured boarding craft onto the crippled ships as they limped from the firestorm. The Imperial Fists crews did not die swiftly. Swamped by thousands of slaves, they held until the Iron Warriors came to finish them in person. Dozens of ships died this way, gutted from within and left to drift, their insides filled with the dead of both sides. To the Iron Warriors the process of victory had begun and the only question was how long it would take to complete.

  The first sign that all was not as it seemed was a bright explosion on the trailing edge of the Iron Warriors fleet.

  The Imperial Fists cruiser Veritas and a destroyer wing cut towards their prey. Their target was a grand cruiser, a hulking brute named Calibos. The destroyers released a spread of fast-running torpedoes towards the Iron Warriors ship as they closed. It tried to evade but turned too slowly. Blisters of fire opened along its dark metal back. The destroyers accelerated past the injured ship. The Calibos listed drunkenly, its course veering as the rest of the fleet pulled away.

  The Veritas struck an instant later, its dorsal cannons crumpling the Calibos’s shields and punching through its carapace. Half dead, it tried to turn its prow towards its attacker. The Veritas raced past, broadsides raking the Iron Warriors ship. The grand cruiser exploded in a shockwave of energy and atomised matter. As the Iron Warriors fleet responded the Veritas and its strike group was beyond its reach and turning for its next attack run.

  It was the first blow of many.

  It is a truth that to stand at the heart of a battle is to see it only through a narrow slit. You see the gross shift and swell of destruction, and the tide of battle submerges all the small moments of death and heroism. The deaths of thousands become only texture to a greater picture, details that you cannot look at because if your attention slips it might mean total defeat. Command breeds callousness. To say otherwise is ignorance.

  For me the battle was a blur of decisions, of losses and victories rendered in impersonal information and abstract projections. I existed above the fray, a set of eyes that saw and a hand that remade what was seen. And what I saw was that we were winning. For a moment the information almost overwhelmed me as my mind turned representation into raw reality.

  Silent flame stained the black void. Armoured ships raked at each other with hot yellow claws. Void shields shimmered and burst. Nova cannon shells exploded like newborn stars. Attack craft spun and slid amongst the greater vessels like silver fish through black water. Iron and gold hulls glowed under converging lattices of energy; melted, split. Dead ships drifted, breaking apart into crumbs of flame-licked metal.

  Another ship exploded. Plasma expanded to a bright white sphere. Golden armour turned to liquid.

  A frigate spun like an injured bird, trailing flame. Lines of hot yellow fire found it and split it into glowing chunks.

  Gull-winged bombers converged on a storm-grey cruiser, warheads sliding from under their wings. Pinprick detonations flared across the cruiser’s spine, carving off augur and sensor arrays. Blinded, it began to list.

  A strike cruiser roared towards a wide-nosed battleship, its shields slick with deflected fire. The battleship turned its flank to the strike cruiser, its gun ports like a murderer’s eyes. The strike cruiser rolled, curved under the battleship’s belly and fired. Macro-shells tore open layers of metal, spilling burning gas into cold space.

  A slab ship tried to turn its battered prow away from its attackers. A spread of graviton torpedoes hit it in its flank, burrowed deep and detonated. The ship shivered as competing forces pulled at its structure, breaking armour, cracking bulkheads. For a second it drifted on, quivering as its bones splintered and distorted. Then its spine broke and it crumpled as if crushed in an invisible fist.

  It was what the months of planning had been for, the hundreds of hours of training. We were ready to resist an attack, but we were facing an enemy far greater than I had ever planned for.

  The Iron Warriors had taken losses, but their strength remained. If we had broken in the first moments we would have died. If we tried to fight the Iron Warriors head on they would have slaughtered us. They knew our weaknesses, we theirs. They had hoped to find us unprepared, but we had not cracked after the first attack. Our defence had snapped back into place like the cogs of a clockwork mechanism. It was an unfixed fortress made of moving strike groups, fading resistance and punishing counter-attacks. Slower battleships drew fire, pulling Iron Warriors ships out of formation, while on the edge of the battle sphere fast strike groups looped around and through the margins of the Iron Warriors fleet. They struck again and again, crippling, destroying, trimming ships from the edge of the enemy fleet like fat carved from meat. As I saw our retribution unfold I think I may have allowed myself a grim smile.

  The Halcyon dived through the battle storm. Its leaf-blade hull glowed with reflected light from explosions and weapons fire. The void was thick with debris and plasma clouds, tumbling together like blood and entrails sinking through water. The Halcyon fired as it dived, prow and dorsal weapons thrusting ahead of its path. Behind it two of its sister ships followed: Unity and Truth. They were smaller, knife blades to the Halcyon’s spear tip. They spun, their flank batteries spiralling a bright helix around them as they sliced through the Iron Warriors fleet. This near to the core of the Iron Warriors formation, the hulls of enemy ships were so close that the gunners could aim by sight.

  On the Halcyon’s bridge Tyr watched as his target g
rew in size on the pict-screen. He preferred to see void war this way, enhanced and filtered so that he could see how enemies moved, fought, and died. It made it real, as if projections and the cold clarity of tactical data robbed it of its visceral truth. His target was an Iron Warriors battle cruiser, its hull studded with lance turrets, its prow an ugly wedge of scored metal. He knew its name: Dominator. Once, decades before, he had seen it break the xenos lines above Calyx. Now he watched its shields flicker and vanish under his guns. The Halcyon’s rage hammered into the Dominator’s back. The Dominator turned and rolled, like a sea leviathan trying to shake free a harpoon.

  ‘Increase firepower,’ said Tyr. This is what the abstract projections lack, he thought. They miss the connection with the enemy, the personal. They miss the point where you look into the eye of an old ally and ram the blade into their heart. The deck lurched under his feet. Red light washed his face as warning lights filled the bridge. They were taking fire, of course. There were a dozen Iron Warriors ships so close he felt he could reach out and touch them. The Halcyon and its escorts were relying on raw speed and aggression to keep them alive. That and more than a little luck, Tyr thought and smiled grimly to himself. Polux had ordered Tyr and his battle group to strike into the centre of the Iron Warriors fleet. They had lost two ships in three passes but killed four times as many. A fair exchange, thought Tyr as he flicked his gaze to pict-views of his two flanking strike cruisers. They looked like fire arrows falling through a forest, kindling an inferno as they flew.

  Proximity sirens began to blare. Tyr turned back to the image of the Dominator. It filled the screen at minimum magnification. He waited until the proximity alert was a desperate shrill and then nodded to the helmsman. The Halcyon rotated on its axis, swooping under the Dominator, its flank batteries firing. The belly of the Iron Warriors ship split open in a string of explosions. The Unity and Truth followed close behind the Halcyon, hammering into the gaping gut wound in the Dominator’s hull. It disintegrated, plasma from its ruptured heart burning it from within. The Halcyon arced away from its kill, engines clawing for speed as it aimed for the edge of the battle sphere.

  The Iron Warriors battle-barge came out of the surrounding swirl of battle. It fired as it came. Tyr felt the explosion shake the hull of the Halcyon. Clouds of flare static filled the pict-screens. The Unity vanished in a spread of detonations. Tyr could see a shape, a huge shape slowly resolving like a cliff coalescing from mist. Fifteen kilometres of cold iron and battle-blackened adamantium. Cooling trails of debris spilled from her flanks to drag in her wake. Her spine was a mountain range of gun fortresses and macro-batteries. Tyr felt his skin go cold. He knew her, had seen her once long ago, when she had been an ally. She was the oldest daughter of the ship forges of Olympia, a breaker of fleets and planets. Her name was Iron Blood, and only one being had ever been her master.

  The Iron Blood fired again and the Truth followed its sister to fiery death. Static blinded Tyr’s view. He was shouting for full speed before the pict-screens cleared. Explosions chased their flight, shaking the Halcyon even as it outran the Iron Blood’s fury.

  ‘Get a signal to Fleet Master Polux,’ shouted Tyr over the shrieking sirens. ‘Tell him the Iron Blood is amongst the enemy. Tell him Perturabo is here.’

  For a moment I could not believe the words I had spoken. The battle projections and floods of information faded. I do not know whether I felt awe, or anger, or elation at what I had decided. Then Tyr’s voice reached me through a fog of static and distortion.

  ‘Brother?’ he said and I could hear his shock through the obscuring white noise.

  I refocused, the nearby battle data snapping back into my awareness. Two more runes marking enemy ships vanished in front of my eyes. The Iron Warriors fleet was pulling itself apart as it tried to engage us, and it bled at every turn. But that was not enough. Not enough for me, not enough for my lost brothers, not enough of a blood price for betrayal.

  ‘Yes, Captain Tyr,’ I said, my words reaching across the void on broken signal waves. ‘My orders stand. I put fifty ships under your command.’ A wash of white noise filled the pause. Tyr was thinking, judging whether to question or embrace my order. When he told me that Perturabo’s flagship led the enemy fleet I do not think he expected such a response. He was my brother, but he never truly knew me.

  ‘As you command, fleet master.’

  I nodded once as if he could see me, as if he stood next to me rather than on the bridge of the Halcyon.

  ‘For Dorn and the Imperium, brother. Your objective is the Iron Blood. Execute Perturabo.’

  Grinding silence and gloom filled the throne room. Harsh, electrical light shone across the face of the Iron Warriors primarch. Across an oil-black screen the battle played out in bare numbers and raw tactical code. His face was unmoving, impassive, but his eyes held a spark of emotion that made Berossus wary as he approached his master. As the primarch’s adjutant he had an unrivalled view of unfolding events. The insight was not heartening. The Imperial Fists had rallied and were inflicting casualties. Significant casualties. The Iron Warriors still had greater numbers, but that margin was diminishing. Berossus would have said that the Imperial Fists might even have the upper hand. He kept the thought to himself; the news he bore was worrying enough.

  ‘Master,’ said Berossus and knelt on the bare metal deck. Perturabo turned his head slowly, his dark eyes fastening on Berossus’s bowed head.

  ‘Speak,’ he said, his voice a low rumble. Berossus continued to kneel, his helm held under his arm, his silent chainsword placed carefully on the deck beside him. He swallowed.

  ‘Master, we have identified the flagship of the enemy fleet.’ He paused and ran his grey tongue across his lips. ‘We have also identified the master of their fleet.’ He chanced a look up, met the primarch’s obsidian gaze and looked back to the floor. ‘It is a captain of the lower orders. Alexis Polux is his name. Sigismund does not command the fleet. As far as we can tell he is not amongst them.’ Berossus could hear only the rhythmic hiss of atmosphere exchangers and the rising beat of his twin hearts.

  The first blow hit Berossus in the chest. Armour plate and bone shattered. One of his hearts burst. The second blow hit him as he spun through the air. He hit the wall with crushing force, slid down, blood oozing out of cracked ceramite. His body flooded with pain suppressors, but he could feel his splintered bones cut into his flesh. Blood filled his lungs and throat. He tried to breathe. Red foam drooled from his mouth and over his broken jaw. He was a bag of mashed meat held into the shape of a man by ruined armour.

  Perturabo stood motionless at the foot of his throne, flecks of Berossus’s blood bright on his gauntlets.

  ‘Tell Golg to find this lesser captain that stands against us,’ said Perturabo. ‘Execute him and throw his corpse to the void.’ At the edges of the room ears heard and carried the order away. Perturabo turned and walked back to his iron throne. On the floor Berossus’s life seeped out of him into a slowly growing pool.

  They assembled in the teleport chamber. Static electricity ran over Tyr’s Terminator armour, sparking between him and the metal skin of his brothers. Machines surrounded them, thrumming with restrained power. He could see tech-priests moving amongst them, muttering their clicking language as they made adjustments. Parchment tapers fluttered in the charged atmosphere. Focusing dishes, capacitor towers and arrays of arcane instruments all pointed in at Tyr and the squad that ringed him. They all wore Terminator armour, their bodies bloated by thick plates of plasteel, fibre-bundle muscles, and adamantium exoskeletons. Out beyond the ring of machines other squads clustered on teleporter plates that spread through the chamber in concentric rings. Terminator armour was rare; the product of high artifice in a few Mechanicum forges. Amongst the Retribution Fleet there were enough suits to clad fifty-three brothers; all of them stood in teleport chambers waiting for Tyr’s word.

  Beside Tyr, Sergeant Timor brou
ght his thunder hammer to rest against the snout of his helm. Oath parchments feathered the hammer’s haft. Tyr knew that inside his helm Timor was speaking his oath of moment again. He felt a surge of pride. They were waiting to go into battle against another Legion, against a primarch. It was a battle none of them had ever thought they would fight, but there was no doubt or hesitancy amongst them. Polux had ordered this strike against Perturabo. That had surprised Tyr; he had thought that his brother lacked the boldness for such a gambit. That this mission might be his last did not matter. That was the nature of war, and the Imperial Fists knew that death was often the price of victory. The Emperor had created them to embrace that truth.

  ‘Sixty seconds, captain,’ said a voice in Tyr’s ear. Tyr recognised the tones of one of the human bridge officers. The man’s voice had a clipped edge. An indication of focus and strain, thought Tyr. It was to be expected. Outside the hull of the Halcyon the inferno-kissed void fled past them. Flanked by a dozen strike cruisers they were plunging into the heart of the battle sphere. In front of them frigates and destroyers converged on target vessels close to the centre of the Iron Warriors fleet. By now they would already be engaging the enemy, wounding with nova strikes, spreading drifts of torpedoes to find what targets they could. Tyr had little doubt that the destroyers would not survive; he had said as much to their commanders when he outlined the plan. None had questioned their orders; they all knew the value of what they attempted. If they could inflict enough damage they would draw the Iron Blood into the engagement. After that the second element would strike from below the axis of battle. Fifteen warships would attack the Iron Blood’s escorts, killing where they could, and drawing fire where they could not. Its attention engaged and its escorts crippled, the Iron Blood would be open for the Halcyon and its strike group. They would deliver the true payload: thirteen hundred Imperial Fists loaded into boarding torpedoes and Stormbirds and waiting in teleport chambers.