by Ben Counter
Valinov had already won. The Lord of Change himself had promised him that - all he had to do was to go through the motions and let the threads of fate twist into shape around him. He could feel it even now, the weight of fate lying on Volcanis Ultor, crushing the freedom out of it. Chaos was pure freedom, the glory of the soul's full potential, the realization of what mankind could be under the tutelage of the Lord of Change - but for Chaos to rule, first the minds of the mortal had to be squeezed dry of their freedom so they could receive the full wisdom of Tzeentch. Mankind had to be enslaved to the will of Tzeentch, so it could eventually become free. The masses would never understand, even though it was the only possible truth, and so it fell to men like Valinov to act as instruments of the coming Chaos.
The shape of the Rubicon could just be made out now in the sky, a twisted splinter of silver trailing debris and vented plasma like a comet.
The groundcar arrived at the rear of the Sisters' lines. The Balurian driver stepped smartly out and held open the door for Valinov and the death cultist.
Valinov stepped onto the parched, dusty ground, gathering his long blastcoat around him, shoulders back and hand on the pommel of his power sword like a true gentleman. The death cultist stood just behind him, and Valinov wondered if she had any idea of what she was involved in. She didn't speak, and Valinov didn't even know her name, but he knew she would follow him to the death just as she had her previous mistress, Ligeia.
Which was just as well, because whatever fate Tzeentch had in store for Volcanis Ultor, it would involve a great deal of death.
'BRIDGE!' YELLED ALARIC into the vox, almost unable to hear his own voice over the din of the Rubicon coming apart under the vast waves of punishment. Shells were still crashing into the hull, screaming as they detonated, hull plates were howling as they were ripped off the ship, air was booming out into the vacuum.
Voices sounded through the static, '...damage reports in... thirty per cent...'
'Can we get to low orbit?' shouted Alaric.
'...systems down, engines... down to twenty...' Alaric couldn't tell which one of the Malleus crew was speaking. It sounded like the bridge itself had sustained damage. How many of the command crew were dead? How many would it take before the Rubicon was left blind and crippled?
The Thunderhawk shook violently in its moorings, as if it was flying through heavy turbulence. The Grey Knights were held fast by their grav-restraints as explosions groaned through the ship.
Suddenly the static on the vox was gone and a clear voice was layered over the sounds of the dying strike cruiser. 'Brother-Captain Alaric, we've lost the bridge. We've set the Rubicon on a final deployment run but control systems are gone so there's no one to correct if the approach is wrong.' Alaric recognised the voice of the officer who held the comms helm, a man Alaric couldn't name. 'We will hit high atmosphere in six minutes if the engines hold. We're heading down to your decks now to make sure the hangar doors open.'
'Good work, officer.' said Alaric as the vox filled back up with static. 'What's your name?'
'None of us have names.' came the faint reply. 'Deployment in six minutes, brother-captain. The Emperor protects.'
THE STRIKE CRUISERS used by the Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes weren't built for gunnery. They were built for speed and resilience, since their primary purpose was to move Space Marines quickly and safely and to take part in boarding actions. They could take a hell of a lot of punishment, the equivalent of Imperial Navy ships of far larger classes, and so the Holy Flame had calculated that it would take almost its whole stock of munitions for its starboard guns to destroy the Rubicon.
The Rubicon, however, was not just a Space Marine strike cruiser, as rare and remarkable as those were. It had been commissioned by the Ordo Malleus whose resources dwarfed those of the highest Naval admiral. The Rubicon had been built using alloys and construction techniques so advanced the Adeptus Mechanicus could no longer replicate them. The Ordo Malleus demanded the best of their Chamber Militant, the Grey Knights, and they provided the best as well. The Rubicon was as solid a ship as had flown since the Dark Age of Technology.
The slow dance of the Holy Flame and the Rubicon twirled into the first wisps of Volcanis Ultor's atmosphere, the thin air ignited into long bright ribbons by the shells that pumped from the Holy Flame's starboard guns. The Rubicon blossomed into flame as it entered the atmosphere, fire rippling like liquid up its sides, pouring from the ruined prow and billowing in huge fluid plumes from its shattered engines. A second plasma generator exploded and sent superheated plasma flashing through the whole engineering section. A section of hull blew out so huge that the Rubicon was split down half its length, spilling wreckage and bodies like a gutted fish. When the ordnance magazine detonated, the explosion was like an afterthought compared to the shrieks and eruptions as the Rubicon began to come apart.
The Holy Flame disengaged, forced out of the dance by the thickening atmosphere that threatened to melt the underside of the hull. But the Rubicon was tougher, and the remaining engines kept it on course to enter the atmosphere shallow enough to deploy its payload.
To hit the Rubicon with another broadside, the Holy Flame would have to loop around, adopt a shallower trajectory to enter the atmosphere, and slide into step with the enemy strike cruiser. But that manoeuvre would take almost twenty minutes to achieve, and by then it would be too late. Captain Gurveylan ordered it anyway.
In the end it was Absolution Squadron, who had waited just inside the atmospheric envelope, who killed the Rubicon. The three Sword-class escorts had enough firepower between them to see off the crippled Rubicon - with a bit of luck just one of them could have done it. But there was not enough time. Any second the Rubicon would send down its drop-pods full of Traitor Marines and then it wouldn't matter what happened to the crippled ship.
To the captain of Absolution Beta, the lead ship in the escorts' formation, his duty was clear. Captain Masren Thai was a pious man who had been born into the Navy and earned his place on the bridge with a service record as long as his lifetime. Thai knew that one day he would have to die doing the Emperor's work, and he had given his vow to the Emperor (who always listened, always watched) that when that time came he would not be found wanting.
He knew that his officers and crew, had he had the time to explain it to them, would have agreed. So it was with no hesitation that Captain Thai ordered Absolution Beta to ramming speed.
THE THUNDERHAWK ENGINES opened up, barely audible over the near-deafening roar of Volcanis Ultor's atmosphere burning against the underside of the Rubicon's hull. Alaric would have voxed his Marines to be strong and have faith, but he didn't think they could hear him. It was better to leave them to their own prayers.
The Thunderhawk lurched forwards as its engines thrust it against its docking clamps, ready to shoot the ship forward when the clamps were released. The inside of the passenger compartment was bathed red as warning lights came on - Alaric could see the grim face of Justicar Tancred as he mouthed the Rites of Detestation, one hand touched to the copy of the Liber Daemonicum that was always locked in a compartment in his chest armour.
There was no way of contacting Santoro or Genhain. The vox was a screaming mess of interference. He couldn't even signal the Malleus crewman in the Thunderhawk's cockpit. Alaric realised the pilot was probably one of the few crewmen left alive on the Rubicon.
So many had to die just so the fight could continue. So many had to suffer so the Grey Knights could do their duty. It was as if Chaos had already won – but then that was the same thinking that drove men into the arms of Chaos in the first place. Alaric spat out a prayer of contrition.
An impossibly loud explosion ripped through the ship behind the Thunderhawk, an appalling crescendo of tortured metal. Something was tearing through the ship, something massive. Or perhaps the ship was finally splitting in two, the strain of entering the atmosphere too much for the shattered hull.
The Thund
erhawk and the drop-pods wouldn't make it. The engines would send the gunship smashing into the flight deck doors because there was no one left alive to make sure they opened. The drop-pods would stay fixed in their clamps until they shattered when the Rubicon crashed into Volcanis Ultor. The Grey Knights would die, and Ghargatulofh had known all along it would end this way.
Alaric put a hand to his copy of the Liber Daemonicum locked in his breastplate, and prayed that someone would avenge him.
Alaric was slammed back into his grav-couch as the Thunderhawk shot forward. The viewport next to Alaric snapped open and he could see the flight deck rushing by - promethium tanks spewed flame, charred bodies lay in pieces, holes gaped into space streaked with fire.
Then the screams of the dying ship were gone, replaced by the pure roar of the Thunderhawk's engines. Alaric craned his neck to see the Rubicon shrinking behind the ship, a plume of flame gushing from the flight decks where the Thunderhawk had waited a moment before. The prow of another ship punched suddenly through the tortured hull of the Rubicon, cutting through the strike cruiser like a knife, massive explosions erupting behind it as its own hull was sheared in two by the force of the impact.
Alaric didn't see the Rubicon explode, but he felt it, the shockwave thudding through the gunship as it descended in its landing course. He knew that the final plasma reactors had gone critical, and that the chain reaction would have turned both ships into a ball of expanding flame like a new star in the sky of Volcanis Ultor.
'...pod down...' came a crackling vox from either Santoro or Genhain. One of them had made it at least, maybe both if the surviving Malleus crew had been quick enough. Not that any of the crew survived now, of course.
'Battle-brothers.' shouted Alaric over the noise of the engines. His Grey Knights were all brought out of their private prayers and looked to him. 'Ghargatuloth will think we are probably dead. I have every intention of showing him that we are not. And though we yet live there is little chance that many of us will survive. Pray now, then, as if this is your last word to the Emperor.'
The Grey Knights bowed their heads.
'I am the hammer.' began Alaric. 'I am the sword in His hand...'
Chapter Seventeen
LAKE RAPAX
CANONESS LUDMILLA HURRIED through the twisting, cramped trench towards the front line. She passed squads of Battle Sisters, and offered them a quick blessing as she passed. The hush over the front lines was chilling - Ludmilla had seen enough battles to associate it with the sudden unleashing of violence that was sure to follow.
She turned a corner and saw the front-line trench stretching before her, its forward edge snarled with razorwire. Ludmilla had almost a hundred Sisters in the front trench; they were the rock against which the attack would break. The Sisters were excellent troops for fighting off a massed assault - their power armour and bolters kept them alive long enough for the Seraphim counter-attacks.
The sound of murmured prayers was a quiet backdrop to the silence. Each Sister had endless pages of prayers memorized, and many had those sacred words sewn into the cloth sleeves or tabards over their armour. Their faith was a shield, a weapon, a way of life.
Sisters were sheltering beneath the front wall of the trench. Trench junctions were held by isolated heavy weapons Sisters, carrying heavy bolters or multi-melta guns to turn enemy breakthroughs into killing zones. Several tanks were dug in to act as anti-tank bunkers - an Excorcist tank was positioned where it could send its payload of rockets breaking down the broad trench should the enemy take it.
Sisters Superior, quietly leading their units' final ministrations, saluted discreetly as the canoness walked down the trench to take her own position on the front line. Ludmilla switched onto the vox-channel that let her communicate with the whole commandery of more than two hundred Sisters, most of them soldiers about to join the fight.
'The Emperor is our father and our guardian.' began Ludmilla, quoting the Ecclesiastical Fundamentals of the revered Saint Mina herself, in whose name the Order of the Bloody Rose had been founded millennia before. 'But we must also guard the Emperor. For He is all Humankind, and Humankind is no more than its faith and diligence in the Emperor's name. An injury to that faith is an injury to the Emperor and to every citizen of the Imperium. It is through affirmation of that faith that our greatest duty lies, but sometimes mere affirmation does not suffice and we must act against those who would harm the faith of humanity through heresy. For we are engaged in an unending war for the soul of the Imperium. Though it may seem the fight will never end, there is victory even in the defeat we see threatening all around.
There is no greater proclamation of faith than to offer up our very lives to guard the soul of humankind. In this we win a victory greater in magnitude than the harm that any heretic can inflict, and so every battle is a shining triumph that the traitor and the apostate can never take away from us.'
Ludmilla let her words hang in the air, the final words dictated by Saint Mina on her death-bed. Every Sister had heard them before. Now, in the calm before the slaughter, every Sister heard the words more clearly than ever before.
Then, in a low, mournful voice, Canoness Ludmilla began to sing.
'A spiritus dominatus, domine, libra nos...'
Recognising the High Gothic opening lines, the Sisters Superior joined their canoness in the invocation of the Fede Imperialis.
'From the lightning and the tempest, our Emperor, deliver us...'
The Fede Imperialis began to echo around the front line as the Battle Sisters took up the hymn.
'From plague, deceit, temptation and war, our Emperor, deliver us...'
The Sisters of the Seraphim squads behind the front line and the Retributor units stationed around the industrial plant joined in the hymn. The crews of the tanks and the Sisters Hospitaller setting up casualty stations along the rear lines sang, too, their voices are ringing through the vox. Even the Sisters Famulous back in Cardinal Recoba's spire sang, steeling their hearts so their faith would be equal to the task.
'From the scourge of the Kraken, our Emperor, Deliver us...'
Those Guardsmen who knew the Fede Imperialis, the battle-hymn of the Ecclesiarchy, joined in. The singing rang out from the northern end of the line, hundreds of voices raised in affirmation forming a choir that filled the polluted air with faith and hope.
They were still singing when the remains of the Rubicon crashed into the Balurian line.
THE THUNDERHAWK WAS sweeping low over the broken plains of Volcanis Ultor to keep below the sensors of anti-aircraft guns. Alaric could see the plain streaking past below a murky sky, dirty pale earth drained of all its life, bleached by chemical pollutants, dried and cracked by aeons of merciless industry. It was barren and bleak, a place where men could not survive long amongst the ash dunes and toxic dribbles that passed for rivers.
Alaric checked the runes displayed on his forearm readout. The drop-pods' beacons were working - the pods of Santoro and Genhain had both made it down, landing close enough to one another for the point between them to serve as a rendezvous. The Thunderhawk could not get close to the defences and the Grey Knights had no armour to transport them - they would have to reach Lake Rapax on foot. What little Alaric had seen of the defences from the Rubicon's bridge indicated that the end of the line was very well-defended. It would not be easy. Ghargatuloth had seen to that.
All Alaric knew about the resting place of St Evisser was that it was on the shore of Lake Rapax. That much Serevic had told him. Everything else he would have to find out the hard way.
'How long?' yelled Alaric over the engines.
'Thirty seconds!' shouted the Malleus pilot in reply. Alaric tried to imagine what the man must be thinking, Knowing that all his colleagues had died in the fireball the Thunderhawk had only just escaped. But who could know what such a man was thinking when he didn't even have a name to call his own, when he had been stripped of everything that made him human so he could better serve the Ordo
Malleus?
The Thunderhawk ramp rolled down and Alaric saw the ground speeding past beneath it, the Thunderhawk's wake kicking up spirals of ash. They were going in fast - there would be more than enough artillery, perhaps even Ordinatus, to destroy the Grey Knights before they could even launch their attack. They had to move fast, for every moment until they got to Lake Rapax was a moment they were intolerably exposed.
The Rubicon had tried to contact Volcanis Ultor to claim the Grey Knights were on Imperial business, but after the first few exchanges, all communications were cut. The defenders were convinced the Grey Knights were the heralds of a Chaos attack, and had sealed their vox-nets and other communications in case the imaginary enemy tried to infect their minds. The only way to get through the defences would be to fight through them, and Alaric could feel the Imperial blood on his hands already.
'We're going in hot, prepare to deploy!' shouted Alaric, the acrid chemical smell of Volcanis Ultor filling the Thunderhawk. Squad Alaric and Squad Tancred snapped off their grav-restraints. The Thunderhawk slewed around and decelerated, the Grey Knights inside holding on tight as the ground loomed close.
Alaric jumped first, followed by the men of his squad. Squad Tancred was next, their armoured bodies smashing craters in the ground as they landed. Justicar Tancred himself held the sword of Mandulis, its mirror-polished blade shining incongruously in the swirling dust and murky light.