The Chapters Due

by Graham McNeill

  Calgar nodded and scanned the plotter, looking for a way out, a way to salvage this ambush from becoming a massacre. Three of his escorts were gone, crippled and drifting, while another two fought on, though ravening packs of hunters surrounded them with punishing broadsides. They wouldn’t last much longer.

  It had been an unequal fight from the start, but it was one his pride and anger had led them into. Calgar cursed himself for missing so obvious a trap. His anger had blinded him to the signs. M’kar or Honsou were cunning enough to exploit their innate trust in the Codex, but they also knew that they fought from a place of emotion.

  Most galling of all was the knowledge that the ships lost in this engagement would likely be recovered and repaired in the docking piers of the Indomitable. Such ships would be unreliable and ramshackle, but they could carry guns and that was all these invaders seemed to care about.

  “My lord,” said Vibius. “What are your orders?”

  “Contact the Master of Engineering,” he said. “See if there’s any way to get the engines back online. Even for a moment.”

  “My lord,” said Vibius, incredulous at having to relate such terrible news. “The engines are gone! We’re dropping into Talassar’s atmosphere, and nothing is going to change that. The Caesar is lost.”

  “You say we have the manoeuvring engines?”

  “Barely.”

  “Then get us through the atmosphere in one piece, Vibius,” said Calgar “That’s all I ask.”

  “We won’t be able to land the Caesar,” pointed out Vibius.

  “I know,” said Calgar. “We’re abandoning her.”

  EIGHT

  SHE WASN'T HERE. Sicarius had examined every corpse, and she wasn’t here. Disappointed, he dropped the last body back onto its front and stood, wiping his gauntlets on a rag he kept specifically for the purpose. The ruined town smoked in the pre-dawn light, its once proud structures now tombs of the dead.

  Sicarius gripped the hilt of his Tempest Blade. It had reaped many of the Bloodborn soldiers—they did not merit being called warriors—this day, but it could never be enough. This small settlement had once been Olynthus, a prosperous trading post in the south-eastern reaches of Espandor’s great forests. Its buildings were simple and rustic, emblematic of the rugged character and earthy lifestyle favoured by this planet’s natives.

  Espandor had a primal, unspoiled beauty few other worlds could match, but Sicarius was a son of Talassar and preferred his worlds to have a modicum of culture. Olynthus looked dreadfully dull compared to the majesty of Talassar’s wondrously uplifting architectural styles.

  Where on Espandor was there anything to match the magnificence of the Reef Towers, the great golden spires that rose out of the waters on Glaudor’s northern coastline? What on this frontier world could hope to rival the marble citadels of Perusia’s consul guilders? Sadness touched him as he wondered how much of that beauty survived.

  In the distance, tall mountains reared over the forest, rugged and untamed. Portions of the forest were ablaze, sending tall pillars of grey smoke into the sky. Praxor Manorian had detached men from the Shield Bearers to douse the fires on the edge of the settlement, and Ixion’s men were cutting down trees to form a makeshift firebreak.

  He turned back to Olynthus, the white plasterwork on many of its buildings daubed with unclean runes by the enemy soldiers who’d occupied them. Cato’s Pride, the Land Raider that carried Sicarius into battle, had demolished these buildings, its adamantine dozer blade making short work of the defiled structures.

  What little was left standing was either ablaze or so punctured by bolter impacts and Thunderfire fragments as to be almost unrecognisable as manmade structures. Nearly a thousand corpses were piled like cordwood in the centre of the town, the vile enemy soldiery that had been garrisoned here. Sergeant Tirian’s men were rigging the Bloodborn vehicles for destruction, and within the hour, nothing would be left of this force.

  “Did you find her?” asked Sergeant Daceus, picking his way through the fallen rubble. Daceus carried his bolter across his chest, the silver steel of its barrel and the bronze of its cheek plates pristine, as though it had come fresh from the armourer.

  “No,” said Sicarius. “She’s not here. A thousand bodies and she’s not here.”

  Daceus shook his head. “I told you she wouldn’t be. Anyone who calls themselves a queen wouldn’t surround herself with such rabble.”

  “Six of these advance forces we’ve hit and there’s no sign of her,” said Sicarius. “I am beginning to suspect she does have eldar farsight.”

  “Or perhaps she’s just been lucky?” suggested Daceus, kneeling beside the body Sicarius had been inspecting.

  “I don’t like lucky opponents.”

  “Who does? But we should be pulling out, captain,” said Daceus. “All this smoke will surely bring reinforcements.”

  “You’re right,” said Sicarius. “We need to recon our next target.”

  Daceus didn’t answer immediately, and turned back to the ruins of Olynthus. “Did you know this town once housed nearly six hundred people?”

  “I saw the bodies,” said Sicarius, recalling the hideous sight of the butchered inhabitants.

  “Some of its people fled to Herapolis, but most refused to retreat,” said Daceus. “They took up their rifles and stayed to defend their homes.”

  “I would expect no less of Ultramar’s citizens,” said Sicarius. “What’s your point?”

  “It was a noble stand, but ultimately futile,” said Daceus. “We need to return to Herapolis.”

  “Retreat? Not when there are enemies still to destroy.”

  “There is no choice, captain,” said Daceus firmly. “We are already overextended. Ammunition stocks are lower than I would like and our transports are almost at the end of their limits of fuel. If we press on much longer, we will not have enough to return to Herapolis. We need to go and we need to go now.”

  Sicarius bit back his frustration, wanting to argue, but knowing that Daceus was right. This far out, they were dangerously exposed and far from help. He smiled, his decision made.

  “I am what I am, Daceus,” said Sicarius at last. “I can’t change that.”

  “Nor would I want you to.”

  “Some call me vainglorious, I know that. But I am not,” said Sicarius, casting his gaze out over the forest. “I serve the Chapter to the best of my abilities. My way is to move fast and never give my enemies a static target. And the best way to do that is to kill the Corsair Queen. She’s the key, Daceus, I know it.”

  Sicarius kicked the dead body at his feet. “Look at this scum,” he said. “You think his kind will fight on without the strength of this Salombar holding them together? If there’s one truth of warfare I believe in the most, it’s that if you kill the head, the body will die.”

  “We’ll find her,” said Daceus. “And then you’ll kill her, I know it.”

  Further discussion was interrupted by the arrival of Gaius Prabian, his power sword and shield slung across his back. The company champion had slain over a hundred enemies today, and Sicarius marvelled at the apparent ease of his killing.

  “What is it, Gaius?” asked Sicarius, sensing his champion’s urgency.

  “Word from Scipio Vorolanus,” said Prabian. “Bloodborn forces are on the move.”

  In the absence of Scout forces, the warriors of Squad Vorolanus often acted as recon units for the 2nd Company. Deployed in the hills to the west, they had acted as Sicarius’ eyes and ears for this engagement.

  “Where?” demanded Daceus, as Sicarius set off for the ruined town.

  “There’s two distinct groups. The largest is coming straight for us, about six kilometres to the east. Heavy armour and traitor Astartes. Greater than company strength.”

  “And the other?” asked Sicarius.

  “Five kilometres north, but cutting south-west towards the bridge over Actium Gorge.”

  “They’re trying to cut our line of retreat,” said
Daceus.

  “We need to go,” said Sicarius. “Now.”

  URIEL REGARDED THE warriors before him with a critical eye and found much to his liking. These were the best and bravest of the 4th Company, warriors who had, time and time again, proved their valour and honour in the face of the most horrific foes imaginable. Each was a heroic warrior of noble aspect and legendary exploits, with entire volumes within the Library of Ptolemy dedicated to their mighty deeds.

  Uriel had never felt the need to lead a command squad before now, preferring to fight within the ranks of his line forces, but Chaplain Clausel had urged him to assemble one for this latest conflict.

  “They will have need of a hero to lead them,” said Clausel. “And a hero needs his lancers around him. Choose these warriors well and the men will fight all the harder as they seek to emulate them and earn a place at your side.”

  Uriel had seen the sense of this, and had chosen the warriors to form his retinue on the journey to Calth after long deliberation, for every warrior of the 4th was worthy of a place. Learchus had helped him with the selection, and Uriel was grateful for the assistance.

  Ancient Peleus bore the company standard, a rippling icon of the 4th’s glorious legacy that had been carried into the most violent conflicts and which had never yet fallen in battle. Only the best and bravest were entrusted with such a sacred duty, and Peleus had more than justified his selection, defending the banner against foes of every stripe with a skill that was truly exceptional.

  Apothecary Selenus had saved every warrior in the 4th Company’s life more than once, the ivory plates of his armour gleaming and pristine. Though his duties as an Apothecary were of vital importance in maintaining the physical integrity of the company, Selenus was, first and foremost, a warrior, and Uriel had seen how deadly his knowledge of a body’s weak points could be in battle.

  Uriel had selected Petronius Nero to be his company champion, a warrior he had always known was skilful with a blade, but had only come to appreciate how skilful in the drop assault on the tau internment camp on Pavonis. He wielded a slender blade he had forged to his precise measurements, exquisitely balanced and weighted to be the perfect killing weapon. Likewise, his combat shield was a bespoke creation, lightweight and as much a weapon as the blade.

  Rounding out the command squad were Livius Hadrianus and Brutus Cyprian, warriors who had excelled in the war against the greenskins of Espandor and on Pavonis. Uriel knew both from the battles on Tarsis Ultra, and their courage was like tempered steel. Hadrianus carried a meltagun, and Uriel remembered him bringing down an entire tau tank squadron with one well-placed shot after another. Cyprian was a warrior of great strength, almost as large as Pasanius, though his physique did not require parts from Terminator armour. Uriel had seen him grapple a tau battlesuit, smashing it open with his bare hands and throttling the life from the xenos creature within.

  “You are to be my lancers,” said Uriel, proud to lead these warriors into battle against this most hated of foes. “And as such you shall be known as the Swords of Calth.”

  Uriel had chosen the name to honour the world they fought to defend, and from the straightening of their spines, he saw that his warriors approved. Clausel was right: every warrior in the 4th Company would strive to equal these warriors’ deeds.

  He let a slow smile creep onto his face as he dismissed the squad and turned to watch the preparations for war filling the enormous structure in which he stood. Cold blue light spilled through distant skylights, and the sound of marching feet, shouting stevedores and honking power rigs as they unloaded hundreds of cargo lifters echoed from its cavernous sides.

  It had been many years since Uriel had set foot on the world of his birth, but upon taking his first breath of its air, albeit the recycled air of Assembly Hangar Septimus Oravia, he felt a potent sense of homecoming, as though Calth itself were welcoming a favoured son. Assembly Hangar Septimus Oravia was just one of a thousand construction yards, nestled cheek by jowl in Calth’s largest surface metropolis. Its official designation was Ultimus Prime, but everyone of Calth knew it as Highside City.

  The last of the 4th Company’s supplies, equipment and war machines were being unloaded from Thunderhawk transports by massively-muscled dock servitors and directed to their staging areas by Techmarines. Thousands of soldiers and labourers filled the hangar, a vast mechanised space of heavy machinery and overhead construction rigs.

  The glow of welding torches and sparking plasma cutters normally flickered in the assembly hangar as naval shipwrights and Mechanicus tech-adepts worked on the hulls of enormous starships. Assembly Hangar Septimus Oravia was a facility for the construction of star-faring vessels, a kilometres-long structure that now served as the mustering area for an army.

  The air reeked of oil, burnt metal and incense, for the building of so complex a machine required more than simply knowledge, it required ritual and incantation. The shipyards of Calth were justly famous throughout the Imperium, and the skill and craftsmanship of their artificers was beyond compare. Unusually for a facility devoted to crafting such colossal vessels, it was not located in orbit, but upon the smooth, flat surface of Calth.

  Beyond the armoured, pressurised walls, the planet’s surface was cold and deadly, utterly lethal to all life, even Space Marines. An ancient enemy had bombarded Calth’s sun with deadly poisons that stripped the planet’s atmosphere away and swept its surface with lethal radiation. Calth’s population now lived below the surface, far from the sun’s deadly rays.

  The Ultramarines had been first to deploy, alongside Inquisitor Suzaku’s small assembly of savants, warriors and other, less easily identifiable servants. The rest of the newly arrived forces were now disembarking within the cavernous assembly hangar. Boxy dropships from Perpetuum Cogito unfolded rotating racks from within their holds to deploy rank after rank of Mechanicus Protectors, cybernetic soldiers with the look of martial tech-priests fitted with numerous weapon augmentations. Magos Locard oversaw clattering maniples of weaponised servitors as they marched in perfect synchrony, little more than mechanised torsos fitted to numerous means of locomotion: multiple legs, tracked units or heavy, off-road wheels.

  Behind them came thousands of skitarii, feral, brutish warriors clad in hide and reptile skin with gleaming battle augmentations surgically implanted in their flesh. They marched beneath a flapping banner of mottled green skin, branded with the cogged skull of the Mechanicus, and bore a multitude of weapons; heavy cannons, wide-barrelled rifles and a glittering forest of long polearms, axes and toothed eviscerators. The savage-looking warriors chanted a repeating binaric war-shout, and but for the plethora of Imperial icons dotting their armour Uriel might have thought them creations of the enemy.

  The Raven Guard deployed to the surface of Calth in a single Rhino, and though it was no structurally different to those of the Ultramarines, it possessed a shadowed quality that made it seem somehow sleeker, darker and less bulky.

  “Quite a force we’ve assembled, eh?” said Pasanius, strolling over from the inspection of his squad. Learchus walked alongside him, though he looked singularly unimpressed with his first impressions of Calth.

  “It is impressive,” agreed Uriel. “I have fought alongside the Adeptus Mechanicus before, but never in such numbers. It makes me glad they are on our side.”

  “Aye,” said Pasanius, watching the battle march of the skitarii. “I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of that lot.”

  “Are your warriors ready?” asked Uriel.

  “The Firebrands are ready,” confirmed Pasanius. “Just let these bastards try and take this world from us.”

  The 4th Company did not normally bestow martial names upon its squads in the manner of some captains, but many had earned unofficial titles during the Pavonis campaign. Uriel suspected the name of Pasanius’ squad had more to do with its sergeant than any specific battle in which they had fought.

  “Learchus?”

  “The Guardians stand ready,” said
Learchus. While Learchus had hunted the captured governor of Pavonis behind enemy lines, Uriel had led Squad Learchus, and he had been more than a little flattered to know they had become known as the Guardians, in honour of the drop assault that broke the back of the tau invasion.

  “Swords of Calth,” said Pasanius, nodding towards Uriel’s dismissed command squad. “I like it. It has a nice ring.”

  “Thank you,” said Uriel. “It seemed appropriate given the world we are to defend.”

  “Feels good to be back, doesn’t it?”

  “That it does,” agreed Uriel, taking his friend’s hand.

  “So this is where you both came from before you got to Agiselus?” asked Learchus, looking up at the deadly light of Calth spilling in through the armoured skylights.

  “Yes,” said Uriel.

  “I am beginning to see why you were such a belligerent cadet. This is a bleak place.”

  “You have never been here before, have you?” asked Uriel, with a sly grin.

  “No,” said Learchus. “Though I have, of course, read of the cavern cities.”

  “Ah, well then you’re in for a treat, my friend,” said Pasanius as a colossal rumbling filled the assembly hangar. Uriel and his veteran sergeants turned to see a towering vehicle emerge from the cliff-like flanks of a Mechanicus lander. Taller than a hab-block, it was a colossal behemoth on tracks wider than three Land Raiders side by side. Oblong and graceless, it was an enormous mobile fortress that dwarfed even the battle engines of the Legio Titanicus. Its massively thick hull could transport several companies worth of soldiery as well as their attendant armoured vehicles.

  “A Capitol Imperialis,” hissed Pasanius. “I haven’t seen one of them in action since Tarsis Ultra. Colonel Rabelaq commanded it, remember?”

  “I remember,” said Uriel, picturing the colonel’s desperate sacrifice against the tyranid Bio-titan on that snow-locked battlefield. “And to think they had three on Salinas and just abandoned them.”