Ventanus has marked a strip of oath paper with his angular handwriting to that effect. Sydance and Barkha bore witness to this, and Selaton affixed the wax-sealed strip to the hilt of his gladius. Ventanus will be the one to drag the last of Lorgar’s sons to the surface of Calth and tear his armour from him before throwing the bastard to the irradiated ground.
He will wait and watch as the caustic rays from the poisoned sun burn the flesh from the Word Bearer’s bones. As layer after layer of skin blackens and drifts away like cinders, the toxic air will scald the traitor’s throat, silencing his screams and causing him to retch up the frothing, disintegrating remains of his lungs.
And just at the instant before the sun’s deadly rays finally kill him, Ventanus will put a bolt through the Word Bearer’s skull.
The last to die will be a Word Bearer, slain by the hand of an Ultramarine.
This is not theoretical.
Purely practical.
II
Lanshear.
Once counted among the great starports of Calth, the city-sized facility burned in the fires of a Legion’s wrath. Hol Beloth and Foedral Fell were two names they knew, but there were others – warriors whose deeds might once have echoed with honour in an earlier age, but which were now bywords for betrayal, mentioned in the same breath as Horus.
Lanshear is a necropolis, a cemetery city whose streets are choked with scorched hulks of wrecked fighting machines, the planet-wide detritus of battle and tens of thousands of radiation-blackened bodies. The lethal rays of Calth’s sun are burning their bones to ash and irradiated winds blow flakes from the dead in swirling dust devils. Most are the mortal soldiery of the traitors, killed by the retribution of the orbital platforms or poisoned by the sun when the last of the planet’s atmosphere was stripped away. Only a scattered few corpses have the post-human scale of legionaries.
Only enemy dead remain on the surface.
The fallen of Calth have been taken below and accorded the proper honour.
Great siege excavators and Mechanicum construction engines intended for wars of crusade are digging mortuary caverns throughout Calth’s bedrock; vast galleries and deep shafts where the honoured dead will forever be part of the world they died defending.
Ingenium Subiaco’s Pioneers have much yet to accomplish, but honouring the dead was the first task Ventanus set them.
III
Tawren’s purging of enemy scrapcode from the orbital defence grid saved Lanshear from complete destruction, but the thoroughness of her retribution left little standing after the beam weapons, missile stations and barrage platforms pounded the Word Bearers’ assault to dust. The shells of foundries and roofless manufactories spread over the blasted industrial hinterland like the ruins of some long-dead civilisation. Forests of sagging tower cranes and the buckled remains of bulk lifter-rigs list like drunks, and the railhead terminal of the Bedrus Oblique is like a child’s toy-set of rolling stock scattered across the transit lines and engine hangars.
Munitions depots and cargo containers stockpiled in anticipation of being raised to orbit burn throughout the starport, and hundreds of ink-black columns of smoke striate the rippling aurora of the sky. The crackle of flames and the screech-metal sound of collapsing structures echo mournfully through gutted transport hulks and the wreckage of a world-conquering army.
Ventanus remembers this place.
He remembers the sheer violence, the never-ending blitz of enemy fire, the overwhelming force of it all. Mass-reactives in solid hurricanes, las sheeting like neon rain and the thunder of traitor battle engines howling in bloody triumph. Explosions and screams merging to shape the death-cry of an entire world.
Compared to that, this nightmarish, flame-lit vision of perdition is almost quiet.
Lanshear is dead, but there is yet activity. The distant foundries and cargo depots far to the north of the main fields are wreathed in a mist that is wholly unnatural, and fires burn there that are not the fires of devastation, but of construction and rebuilding. In the midst of this planetary cataclysm, something survives. Fragmentary vox-intercepts suggest Foedral Fell holds the northern foundries, but beyond that supposition, nothing more is known for certain.
The aftermath of the battle for Calth has left a great deal of theoretical, but precious little practical.
Below the ridge where Ventanus and two hundred legionaries of the Fourth are concealed, the rusted tracks leading from the burning railhead terminal run in arrow-straight lines from the Oblique to the foundry depots.
‘Can you see anything, sir?’ asks Selaton, crawling up to join him at the edge of the ridge.
Ventanus shakes his head. Whatever is happening in the north remains a mystery.
‘I need Vattian’s scouts,’ he says. ‘But...’
He waves a hand, leaving the sentence hanging, and Selaton nods in understanding.
During their desperate thrust towards the guildhall, Vattian’s pathfinders safely brought them into Lanshear under the watchful gaze of the Word Bearers, but their armour is too light to survive the hostile environment of the surface. Even Mark IV plate can only remain above ground for a limited time before its protective qualities are eroded. Terminators can move with impunity, but Ventanus has precious few of them at his disposal.
‘You really think the Word Bearers will come this way?’ asks Selaton, and Ventanus knows that the sergeant shares Sydance’s belief that this is a theoretical without merit.
‘I do,’ says Ventanus, nodding towards the railhead terminal. Hundreds of locomotive convoys lie scattered like dead snakes throughout, their fuel tenders split and belching thick, tarry smoke.
‘Why?’ asks Selaton. ‘There are plenty more direct routes to the northern foundries.’
‘All of which involve crossing large tracts of open ground.’
‘Hit it at speed and they could be across before the orbitals got a solution.’
‘Without vehicles? Would you risk it?’
Selaton considers the question for a moment before answering. ‘Theoretical – if I was trapped on an enemy world with no immediate prospect of reinforcements, I’d want to link up with friendly forces as quickly as possible.’
‘Practical – the railhead terminal offers cover,’ says Ventanus, gesturing to the building’s shell-cratered roof. The covering is still largely intact, though shafts of wounded blue light spear through its smoke-fogged interior. ‘Server Tawren’s auspex feeds suggest that whoever’s leading this force is cautious. He’s moving from cover to cover, taking his time.’
‘But she lost them,’ points out Selaton. ‘We don’t know where they are now.’
‘If he wants to reach Foedral Fell alive, he’ll come this way,’ asserts Ventanus.
‘Did the Server happen to mention anything about their numbers?’
‘At least five hundred, maybe more,’ replies Ventanus.
‘Then I hope you’re right,’ says Selaton with relish.
IV
They come in ragged squads at first. Tentatively, like thieves in the darkness.
Emerging from the gutted shell of a Titan repair facility, two groups of Word Bearers emerge like wary grazing beasts approaching a watering hole frequented by an apex predator. They move swiftly between the burning hulks of derailed shipping containers. Ventanus lets a finger slip beneath the trigger guard of his bolter.
He lets out a breath.
These are just scouting forces – probing thrusts into the flaming ruins at the edge of the terminus. They hope to provoke any potential ambushers into carelessness, but Ventanus has been specific in his orders. None of his warriors open fire, though each of them dearly wishes to. If this trap is to be sprung completely, then the Word Bearers must fully stick their heads into the noose.
Watching the enemy warriors, Ventanus sees the plate of their legionary armour has changed again. First it c
hanged from granite grey to crimson. Now it is a mixture of scorched black, bare-metal iron and a few remaining patches of bruised blood. The first was a choice, but this latest change is not. The light of Calth’s wounded star has robbed the XVII Legion of uniformity, and Ventanus realises he can no longer think of them as legionaries.
They are too ragged, too individual to be worthy of such a unifying term.
They do not even deserve any force designation such as company or battalion.
This is a warband, a haphazard arrangement of survivors.
Within the protective environment of his helmet, his lip curls in contempt.
You won’t be survivors for much longer.
These forward elements of the Word Bearers advance into the railhead terminal, still moving cautiously, still keeping one eye on the sky and the unseen orbital weapons. They pass out of sight, obscured by the banks of smoke, and Ventanus counts the long seconds in time with his heartbeat.
He wonders if he has made a mistake. Perhaps the Word Bearers have split into smaller groups, each one making its own way to Foedral Fell. He senses Selaton’s scrutiny, but keeps his gaze fastened on the buckled tracks leading to the terminus. He wills the enemy to show itself.
Then the real prize comes into view.
A marching column of Word Bearers emerges from the shelter of the repair facility, moving with as much speed as caution allows. Ventanus calculates their numbers to be close to six hundred. All infantry – no vehicle support and no Dreadnoughts. A few light artillery pieces, but nothing that gives him pause or second thoughts.
But it is more than their lack of heavy firepower that convinces him that this attack will work. Watching the exaggerated caution in their movements, Ventanus realises that the Word Bearers are in a state of shock. They came to Calth arrogant, confident of total victory. They forgot who they were fighting. That slip allowed the Ultramarines to deliver a stinging reprimand, the gut-punch from a downed fighter that turns the bout on its head.
Ventanus waits until he is sure that there are no more Word Bearers yet to emerge from hiding.
He rises to his feet and reaches behind him, hand outstretched.
Another sergeant, Barkha, hands Ventanus the standard, its haft dented and the fabric of the company colours torn and ragged. He plants it at the edge of the ridge and pulls his bolter tight to his shoulder.
‘For Calth!’ he shouts, and two hundred warriors of the Fourth rise up.
Bolter fire blitzes down into the wreckage in front of the railhead terminus. The barking volley punches scores of Word Bearers from their feet before they are even aware that they are under attack. A second volley kills dozens more. Now the enemy are moving into cover, returning fire and keeping their heads down. The Ultramarines do not advance, but hold their position, pouring fire into the enemy ranks. Ventanus is a keen-eyed shot and takes his time, picking his targets with care. He scans for officers and sergeants among the Word Bearers. His task is made more difficult by the fact that the scorching of their war-plate has obliterated most symbols of rank.
In lieu of conventional markings, he targets those with the greatest disfigurements wrought upon their shoulder guards or helmets, the most heavily scarred or those to whom others appear to defer. He puts a mass-reactive through the helm of a warrior whose breastplate is hung with dagger-like fetishes and whose mail cloak glitters with an oily sheen. He kills another with a jagged star symbol cut into the faceplate of his helm. A warrior with a long chain-glaive and a crackling power claw dies with his chest blown out as he runs between two broken tenders. Any one of these kills would earn him a commendation for marksmanship, had anyone but him seen the shots.
Ventanus feels the same rightness to these kills he felt as they first fought their way into Lanshear. At this moment, his bolter is more than just a weapon, it is an instrument of just retribution, the nemesis of all that is faithless and treacherous. He ejects his emptied magazine and slots a fresh one home with smooth ease.
A series of explosions bloom along the ridge-line, and the impacts hurl perhaps twenty Ultramarines to the ground. Ventanus recognises the detonations of lightweight field artillery shells. Scavenged Army weapons, not Legion ordnance. All the downed Ultramarines are quickly back on their feet and firing downhill with only a fractional pause in their killing.
The Word Bearers are shooting back, but their response is desultory at best. Some enemy warriors are not even bothering to return fire, and it takes Ventanus a moment to realise why. Selaton reaches the same conclusion a moment later.
‘They don’t have enough ammunition to fight back,’ he says.
That same realisation is spreading amongst his warriors, and Ventanus feels their desire to take the fight to the Word Bearers. They want to look the traitors in the eye as they kill them. They want to spill enemy blood with their own two hands. Like them, Ventanus wants to mag-lock his bolter and advance with his sword drawn, to teach Lorgar’s faithless sons the cost of not finishing the job they started.
He checks the thought.
The theoretical is glorious, but this practical does not allow for emotion.
‘Hold position,’ he says. ‘Maintain fire.’
The tone of his voice is unequivocal and locks the Ultramarines in place.
The Word Bearers are no longer shooting back. Instead, they are risking the relentless fire of the Ultramarines as they run for the rail terminus. They have abandoned the field guns, knowing they are useless against warriors protected by power armour.
Dozens of Word Bearers are cut down as they cross the open ground, but hundreds more survive to reach the smoke-choked cover of the terminal. Thick smoke swallows them and not even Ventanus’s auto-senses can penetrate the chem-rich blackness.
Selaton looks at him, waiting for him to give the order.
Word Bearers bodies litter the ground.
Some will still be alive, and Ventanus is glad. They will know what is coming.
He opens a vox-link on a pre-arranged frequency.
‘Server Tawren, this is Ventanus. The enemy is in the kill-box,’ he says. ‘You have a solution?’
‘Affirmative,’ comes Tawren’s vox-distorted reply. ‘Engaging now.’
Her voice is without accent and apparently devoid of emotion – though Ventanus knows her well enough to know that is not true. He has come to like her, as much as any post-human can be said to like a chimeric, fully modified adept of the Martian priesthood.
Selaton hears this exchange and turns his gaze upon the railhead terminus as the clouds light up with the approaching storm. A dazzling tower of light flashes from space, briefly linking an orbital lance battery with the surface of Calth. The shell-punctured roof of the terminal lifts off in a rush of explosive kinetic force before vanishing in a cloud of fire.
Ventanus does not flinch as the electromagnetic pulse and colossal overpressure wash over him. With one hand on the company standard, he stands immobile as another lance strike pounds the railhead terminus, then another. Twice more the orbital battery unleashes its power, and when the roiling banks of volcanic smoke are blown clear, nothing remains.
The ground has been vitrified. Not so much as a single brick or nub of steelwork remains standing within a five-hundred-metre radius of the first impact point.
Ventanus nods in satisfaction and returns the standard to Sergeant Barkha.
He pre-empts Selaton’s question of the lance strike’s timing before it is asked.
‘Because I want the last sight of every Word Bearer to be an Ultramarine,’ says Ventanus.
V
The caves sit beneath a conurb-ring on the southern transit hub of the Uranik Radial, a once populous region of vast habitation blocks a hundred kilometres west of Lanshear. Its hyperstructures and sprawling mega-towers were toppled by the guns of warring Titans, in a firestorm like the coming of an apocalypse. Heedless of th
e terrified inhabitants, traitor engines and loyalist forces duelled in a battle that left hundreds of thousands of combatants dead, but saw no real victor as each side’s forces were drawn away to higher-value objectives.
The caves are a marvel, a series of naturally occurring subterranean voids that local legends attribute to the mythical serpent said to have honeycombed the bedrock of Calth in the planet’s prehistory. No one believes such things, not even children, but a new serpent has made its lair in the coiling tunnels beneath the Uranik Radial.
His name is Hol Beloth, and once he commanded an army of annihilation, a genocidal host that sought not to conquer and enslave but to destroy in the name of Horus. Half a million warriors rallied to his banner.
The barest fraction of that force remains.
His army has been reduced to less than ten thousand, and even this number is largely made up of the mangy rabble of the brotherhoods: among them the Kaul Mandori, the Tzenvar Kaul, the Jeharwanate, and the Ushmetar Kaul. Bloodied and humbled, the predatory hosts of Hol Beloth take refuge in the Uranik arcology, invisible to the murderous fire of the orbital batteries and sheltered from the deadly radiation scouring the surface, but tarred with failure.
As falls from grace go, Hol Beloth’s is all but complete.
Hol Beloth is one of the anointed ones, a warlord of vaunted ambition and proven battle-worth. He has led conquests on a thousand worlds, seen the fall of empires and brought ruin to uncounted enemies. He is all this and more, but he fears that his dream of ascending to stand at the side of Lord Aurelian is slipping from his grasp.
He still does not understand how they failed.
The Ultramarines were broken, scattered and leaderless. Within minutes of destruction.
And then the heavens rained fire and killing light, gutting Titans with every hammerblow from orbit and reducing entire warhosts to ash. Somehow, the enemy had regained control of the orbital batteries and turned what should have been his greatest triumph into his blackest defeat. Lanshear was to burn in the thunder of Hol Beloth’s guns, but the storm turned and tore the beating heart from his chest.
Mark of Calth Page 4