by Various
‘I and Gunnir faced their lord. We are the Legiones Astartes, Space Marines of the Emperor, Wolf Guard, and the favoured sons of Russ. But he was mightier still, a primarch. Gunnir rushed in first, axe descending. With one sweep of his arm, Alpharius knocked him down. I pressed my own attack, sword in hand. Together we duelled.
‘Long did our fight proceed, a blur of weapon and might’s art that I will never again experience. If that is to be my last battle, so be it, for it was a contest worthy of the sagas. I have been unmatched in war, but I could not prevail there alone. Gunnir saw his chance. He re-entered the fray, curving his axe down at the traitor’s leg. He lost his life for it, but distracted our foe long enough.
‘I ended Alpharius with my pistol. Primarch or not, he died by my hand with a bolt to his head.’
I spoke up. ‘What happened then?’
‘We fought free, the three of us, to their embarkation decks where we seized a Stormbird drop-ship. It was a miraculous escape, but we skulked through an asteroid field like chastened dogs until we arrived here, and their final surprise was sprung – for a pair of them had stolen on board with us. As Holdar battled one within the ship, the other sabotaged the engines, and we were clawed down into the well of your planet’s gravity.’
Ven seemed concerned. ‘I know a little of star vessels. Did you sail upon the tides of the warp?’
‘No, we did not venture into the empyrean,’ said Torbjorn, gently. ‘A Stormbird has no such capability, little captain.’
Sareo’s expression grew haunted. ‘But that means…’
‘Yes. I am sorry. The traitors are coming here. Nevertheless, hope remains. I sent a message to my kin. They come also.’
We spoke little as we sailed the final day. A storm beset us, and our attentions were focused on our craft. Torbjorn stood at the prow, weathering all that the sea could throw at us.
Our fears did not subside with the tempest. With clear night skies, we glanced often to the stars, seeking movement.
The sky-ship came as we approached land the next morning. A small cove, not far from this village – you know it, don’t you boy? You have seen the stone cairn there. I know you have broken the ban and gone to see. What young man would not? The craft flew in from the sun, roaring round the headland as it slowed its approach.
I laughed in relief. ‘The wolf’s head, sir giant – they carry the emblem of a wolf’s head!’
Torbjorn laughed as well. ‘It is one of our craft, the Hunter’s Moon! My brothers are here!’
Surf carried the boat in to shore and we jumped down, pulling it out of the waves. Torbjorn did not lend his strength to ours. He stared at the sky-ship at the edge of the dunes, apprehensive.
‘Something is not right,’ he murmured.
The ramp opened.
Out strode six giants clad in rich, indigo blue. Their leader was ornately attired – bareheaded, his scalp gleamed coppery in the sun.
Torbjorn’s face twisted in an enraged snarl. ‘No! It cannot be! I slew you!’
He reached for a pistol that was no longer there. The other giant raised his gun.
Pray you never hear that sound, boy – the terrible, terrible sound of Legion weaponry.
Ven was right beside me one moment, and the next he was gone. Scraps of his flesh spattered over me as he collapsed into the surf. Sareo turned to flee, but his arm was blasted from him, his body shredded, and he fell.
Torbjorn roared in defiance. ‘Die, traitors!’ He ran at the giants in blue, as they all opened fire upon him.
He made it less than ten paces before he was cut down. Torbjorn had fought his last.
No more guns spoke. I opened my eyes. The remains of my cousin and my captain rolled in the rush of the tide at my feet.
‘No, no…’
The leader levelled his gun at me, its muzzle a black eye staring the promise of death. I shook with terror. For an age, I waited to die.
Then he smiled right at me; cruelly, as if I were nothing but a joke to him. He put up his weapon, and marched back up into the sky-ship.
The others followed. Sparkling in the sunlight, the jewelled eyes of the many-headed serpent emblazoned upon their armour plates transfixed me as they left.
I did not dare move as the sky-ship lifted from the ground and flew from my sight.
Much to my shame I survived, boy. The giants never returned, but I will never forget that day. That golden afternoon of bloody surf haunts my nights still.
I tell you, whatever fear you may have for the ocean, there are far worse monsters swimming in the sky’s night. I know, because I have seen them.
I was there the day the hydra came to Pelago.
The explosions rippled along both flanks of the Veritas Ferrum. The blasts were twin broadsides, as the Iron Hands strike cruiser drove between its enemies. With Night Lords to port and the Alpha Legion to starboard, there was no question of evasion. There was only, for now, a choice of foe.
As the Veritas was bracketed by the fire of the two smaller cruisers, her void shields flared with the brilliance of a new sun. The glare was so intense that, for an instant, the oculus showed nothing but white blindness.
Standing at his command lectern, Captain Durun Atticus raised his bionic rasp of a voice over the din of alarms and the rumble of secondary blasts. ‘Damage report, Sergeant Galba!’
‘Void shield collapse over port-side stern, captain. Fire in that landing bay, and in the serf barracks.’
‘Seal the sector. Divert its power to the shields.’
Galba looked up from his post just beneath the lectern. ‘Captain, the survivors–’
Atticus silenced the sergeant with a sharp gesture. ‘They’re dead either way. Anyone in that sector is a casualty. Let’s not add to their numbers. Do it, damn you!’
Damn the arithmetic of war. Damn Horus. Damn the turncoat cowards who were filling the near orbit of Isstvan V with the wreckage of ships, the flames of treachery, and the ruin of the Emperor’s dream.
‘And damn me too,’ Atticus muttered.
Galba paused over his controls. ‘Captain?’
‘Nothing.’
But it wasn’t nothing, was it? What was it he had said to his men, laughing with that bionic larynx of his – laughing – as the Veritas had begun its journey through the warp to the Isstvan System? He had said that it was not true that the Legions knew no fear, because he had a great one, and his fear was that they would arrive to find that their primarch, Ferrus Manus, had already crushed the Warmaster’s rebellion without them.
After Callinedes – after Fulgrim’s craven ambush – and after the warp storms had calmed, Lord Manus had raced hard for Isstvan, taking the fastest, least-damaged ships, and filling them with his most experienced Avernii veterans. Atticus had given over half his complement of warriors to the primarch’s folly. But now the Veritas Ferrum had finally dropped out of the warp at the system’s Mandeville point, and into a vision of hell.
Atticus descended from the lectern and strode to the oculus. Littering the far orbit of the Isstvan star was a graveyard of loyalist ships. Some had been caught as they attempted to escape, but many more were simply torn apart by enemy fire as soon as they emerged from the immaterium.
The Iron Hands’ second wave had been virtually obliterated.
‘Hard to starboard!’ he ordered, sweeping his eyes over his crew. ‘Will none of you ask if I am relieved that my fear has not come to pass?’
The battle was not over, but the terrible truth was that it seemed as though it soon would be.
He jabbed a finger at the nearest enemy ship that hove into view as the Veritas began its turn. ‘I want everything hitting that Alpha Legion bastard.’ If he still had lips, they would have parted in a murderous smile. ‘So the individual is unimportant, is it, Alpharius?’ he spat. ‘Then what we’re about to do won’t hurt you at all.’
With the slow majesty of a glacier, the Veritas rounded on its prey. The Alpha Legion ship, the Theta, tried to evade by
rising above the ecliptic, but it was too slow, and too late. Concentrated lance and torpedo fire from the Veritas overwhelmed its void shields. They went down in a flickering cascade, and the Theta’s running lights died just before the Iron Hands main barrage struck it amidships.
The blow was devastating. The Theta broke in half.
Galba called out from his station, ‘The Night Lords vessel is firing again.’
‘Noted, sergeant. Countermeasures.’ Atticus looked at the bisected cruiser before them. ‘Helmsman,’ he ordered, ‘take us through.’
The prow of the Veritas Ferrum drove into the dissipating fireball where the core hull of the Theta had been. The two sections of the Alpha Legion vessel seemed to fold in upon the Veritas in an embrace of the void. There was a glancing impact that brought down the starboard prow shields, but then the Veritas was clear. Behind them, the Night Lords vessel’s flank was exposed to the wreckage – the ship was manoeuvring into an evasive turn, but there was no time. The shattered rearward bulk of the Theta slammed into it, lighting up the void as her reactor went critical.
The sound that came from Atticus’s voice box was a growl of satisfaction. ‘Sergeant Galba?’
‘Shields holding. Just.’
Ahead, there was a clear path. Atticus turned to the vox-operator. ‘Any word from the dropsite?’
‘Nothing I can confirm, captain.’
They had received only fragmentary vox chatter since their arrival. Broken distress calls from voices that claimed to be Iron Hands, lamenting the death of their primarch, but never any direct responses to hails from the Veritas. Atticus returned to the command lectern. ‘More lies, then,’ he said. He would not believe that Ferrus Manus had been killed. Not unless he saw the primarch’s body before him. Perhaps not even then.
He would not believe it. Yet deep down he knew there was nothing left to salvage from the dropsite, and he felt his soul filling with a hatred that he would carry to his grave.
Galba’s auspex blared a proximity alarm. ‘Capital ships, dead ahead!’
Atticus could not sigh any more. So much of the weak flesh was gone, the many basic human mannerisms given up and replaced by the strength of metal. So he did not sigh – he tightened his fists instead, bending the rails around the lectern. ‘We must retreat. If we do not, if nothing of the loyalist forces survived the slaughter on the surface, what then? What then for our Legion?’
The vox-operator whirled to face the lectern. ‘Signal! Thunderhawks. Two, outbound from the debris field, requesting aid.’
The war-arithmetic loomed before Atticus once more. ‘Put it on main speaker.’
Static crackled through the open channel. Then came a voice.
‘This is Sergeant Khi’dem, Salamanders 139th Company. Our carrier vessel was destroyed. We need recovery.’
Atticus looked at the tactical hololiths before him. So few allied ships left. The Veritas was the only one close enough, and with even the illusion of freedom to act. But the arithmetic was unforgiving.
‘I’m sorry, sergeant. We cannot help you. This is the Tenth Legion strike cruiser Veritas Fe–’
‘We have a number of your brothers and those of the Raven Guard aboard. We lost many to save them. Is that worth nothing?’
‘Do you have our primarch?’
There was a long moment of silence. ‘No.’
‘Then, I regret–’
‘Three Legions have fought for the Emperor, and now face annihilation. Are they to be abandoned, their sacrifice forgotten? Will you grant the traitors an absolute victory? Will there be no witnesses to what was done this day on Isstvan Five?’
Atticus cursed. He cursed Khi’dem. He cursed the entire galaxy.
‘Helmsman, set course to intercept. Recover those ships.’
He hated the piece of his soul that rejoiced at the decision. He wished he had replaced it with bionics, too.
The Veritas Ferrum closed with the Thunderhawks. On both its flanks, the great warships of the Sons of Horus and the Emperor’s Children were approaching. A noose was closing around the Iron Hands.
The Veritas slowed to take on the two gunships, even as the traitors opened fire. The starboard landing bays were closing when the torpedoes struck the port side. Then the already terrible damage became catastrophic.
The explosions were thunder that built upon thunder. Atticus felt his ship’s wound through the command interface like a blade scraping the length of his ribs. The bridge klaxons were the Veritas screaming in pain.
But the Iron Hands still had the vector of escape. Atticus pounded the railing of the command lectern. ‘Go!’ he roared.
The Veritas ran. The tear in its flank was huge. It bled air and flame and tiny, armoured figures into the void. The ship was rocked by yet another torpedo hit.
Galba was hunched over his post as though the screens themselves were his enemies. ‘Fire spreading, captain. Over a hundred legionaries lost to the void.’
‘Many times more than the Thunderhawks were transporting,’ Atticus raged. ‘I’m sure our guests are worth it.’
He felt it then, the final excision of mercy from his being. The last weakness, killed one battle too late. And now, with only one desperate path remaining, a calmness as cold as the grave descended upon him.
‘Make the jump.’
Galba was staring at him. ‘Captain, the hull is compromised–’
‘Make the jump. Now.’
The Veritas Ferrum’s warp engines flared. The bleeding ship plunged into reality’s scream, and Atticus gazed into the maw of a future as pitiless and uncertain as he.
‘It is not the dead I pity but the living. Those left at the threshold of ending are the ones who bear the burden of death. They are the ones who have to learn to live, knowing that nothing can be as it was.’
– from Lament for the Phoenix,
penned by the Primarch Fulgrim in 831.M30
‘When do we free him?’
The voice was the first that Crius had heard since he had woken in the prison of his armour. It was low and deep, like the sea surging against a cliff. Static cracked and popped as the vox-system came to life in his helmet. The darkness remained, pressing against his eyes.
‘When we reach the edge of the sun’s light, Boreas,’ said a second voice, further away but still close.
‘Is he awake in there?’ asked the first voice, the one called Boreas.
‘Perhaps.’
Small jolts of electricity ran up Crius’s spine. Power was slowly seeping into his armour systems – enough for him to feel, but not enough for him to move. That was the point, of course. In this state his armour was as complete a prison as any cell, its fibre bundles paralysed, its servos locked.
This is not Khangba Marwu, he thought, and the months of silence in Terra’s great gaol rose and drained away as the realisation hardened. I am no longer chained beneath the mountain. His armour was vibrating against his skin, steady and slow, like an electric pulse.
I am on a ship, he realised.
He had spent most of his life on ships, journeying between wars across the scattered stars, and the sensations of a vessel under power were as familiar to him as the beat of his own hearts. At least they had been, before he was returned to Terra, before Crius, Lord of the Kadoran and veteran of nearly two centuries of war, had become an Iron Hands legionary of the Crusader Host.
Before he had been forgotten.
Light touched his eyes. Ice-blue numerals ran across his sight. He tried to focus on the scrolling data but found that he could not. The connections between his flesh and augmetics itched; the scrambler that the Custodians had used to subdue him had shorted out half of the connections.
He began to inventory the details of his situation. He had no weaponry beyond his own body. Not normally the greatest of problems, but he had no control of his armour, and it was likely to be power starved. His augmetics were functioning far below optimal parameters. Even if he could get control of his armour, his combat effecti
veness was fifty-nine per cent of optimal. That, of course, was based on the presumption that there were no other bindings holding him in place.
Not forgetting that you were too old for the warfront before you were sent to Terra, said a voice at the back of his thoughts. Not forgetting that factor.
Then there was the question of what enemy he would face. He recalled the voices he had heard, rolling their pitch and tones through a mental analysis. No auditory markers of the Custodians, but the vocal range was outside a human norm – deeper, textured by muscles and structures that mortals lacked. The conclusion formed in his mind with the smallest possibility of error: Space Marines.
He had new gaolers then, but why?
Irrelevant. That they were Space Marines was enough to skew the combat outcome. Even if I could move I would likely still lose, he thought.
Hatred rose through him then – hatred for those who had betrayed the Emperor, hatred for those who had imprisoned him, but most of all hatred for his own weakness. He should not have become weak enough that his only use was as a figurehead; he should not have allowed himself to be imprisoned; he should have been with the rest of his clan and Legion as they struck down the traitor Horus. He should…
He shut down the chain of thoughts, containing them and allowing their heat to flood him but not dull his logic.
‘The truth of iron,’ he muttered to himself, ‘guide me.’
Something scratched on the outside of his helm. He froze, muscles tensed and poised. Gas hissed around his neck. Seals clunked open and his helmet lifted away. His eyes dimmed as light poured into them, and his sight fizzed briefly before resolving to clarity.
A broad face looked back at him. Tanned and scar-knotted skin covered flat and muscle-thickened features; it was the face of one of the Emperor’s finest, the face of a Space Marine. A close-cropped strip of hair ran down the centre of the warrior’s skull, and a pair of dark eyes watched Crius without blinking. Crius stared back, his indigo lenses set into a face divided between scarred flesh and chromed ceramite.
He sat in a throne at the centre of a chamber of tiered stone. Chains wound across his body, linking to manacles at his wrists and fixed to cleats in the floor. The walls of the chamber were black, smooth and flecked with crystal that sparkled in the light of dimmed glow-globes. Banners hung from the walls, their gold, black and crimson thread tattered by bullet holes and charred by fire. The domed ceiling above was a mosaic of white and black tiles forming the emblem of a clenched fist.