Such a mark was highly unusual outside of techmarine covenants. He had been groomed for that path, but had neither the temperament nor the inclination to succeed upon in. He had been reassigned to the recon ranks, where his fierce independence, resourcefulness and insubordination were a more comfortable fit. Those same traits that had made him such a bad line soldier proved to be an asset, and his Martian training made him invaluable when working behind enemy lines as a saboteur.
Indeed, that talent had been well used on Terra.
He cradled a long rifle wrapped in camo-netting in the crook of one arm. A ragged cameleoline shadowcloak hung over his stripped down armour, the heavy material bending light around him. Beneath the dust and mud, that armour retained the slate grey of the Legion's original colours.
He had cursed, using low-caste Colchisian gutter-slang, when Chaplain Jarulek had questioned his choice not to consecrate his armour in the colours of the Legion reborn.
'You try remaining unseen garbed in red, priest,' he had snarled. Jarulek had sought Sor Talgron, requesting that the captain overrule the insubordinate recon sergeant. But he had not disagreed with Loth's reasoning, and had let the protest stand.
It had been Loth and his understrength squad that had spied the stealth-shrouded enemy craft flying low through the valleys of the mountains. They had been returning from a scouting kill-mission, and while the enemy craft had not appeared on the squad's signum, they had locked onto its heat signature and tracked it as it came in to land. It had been Loth's locator beacon that had guided Sor Talgron's ship here.
The XVII legionaries were working to gain entry to the shaft via the sealed, heavy reinforced blast portal that appeared to be the only entrance. Las-cutters spat and whined as they worked.
'There's a conveyor, currently at the base of the shaft,' said Loth. 'It's been deactivated, and will be rigged if they have any sense. It's what I'd do.'
'Can you bring it back online?' said Sor Talgron.
'It shouldn't be difficult.'
'Good,' said Sor Talgron. 'Once that door is free, want you and your squad down that shaft. Bring the conveyor up. Try not to get yourselves blown up.'
Loth nodded vaguely and moved to brief his squad, spitting again as he walked away.
'Low-caste dog,' said Dal Ahk, watching Loth squat and begin outlying his orders to the group crouched around him.
'I was low-caste as well, remember,' growled Sor Talgron.
'I'm sorry, my lord. I spoke out of turn.'
'Put your prejudice aside, if he wasn't any good, he'd be dead by now.'
'They'll be waiting for us down there. We'll be walking straight into their guns.'
'I am aware of that,' said Sor Talgron.
'I don't understand, captain. Why are we bothering with them? The war is won. The world is taken.'
'I do not intend to leave this sector while a single Ultramarine still breathes within it,' said Sor Talgron. 'We could pound this mountain for weeks from orbit and they'd still be down there. They'd barely even notice. Are we walking into an ambush? Yes. Is there any alternative? No.'
'Why retreat here?'
'Ah, now that is the better question.'
'And the answer?'
Sor Talgron turned to look at his master of signal. 'I have no idea,' he said.
'Pistols and blades,' Loth announced, standing. His legionaries unburdened themselves of extraneous encumbrance: ammunition, power-packs, communications equipment and their bulkier weapons. They stripped off their refractive shadowcloaks. Lastly, Loth leaned his long rifle amidst the pile of gear, parting with it only reluctantly.
'Nobody touch that,' he snarled before slipping on his modified helm. His lenses did not light up — they were non-reflective and muted, as flat and dead as his single organic eye.
The doors were cracked, and the secure portals were wrenched open. Loth directed a lazy salute at Sor Talgron and Dal Ahk before turning and leading his squad on the descent. One by one, they slipped over the lip of the conveyor shaft, as soundless as shadows.
'Insubordinate bastard,' said Dal Ahk after he had gone, moving amongst the stacked gear and pointedly kicking Loth's rifle. Sor Talgron shook his head.
While they waited, another shuttle arrived, brought in at Sor Talgron's order. A heavily armoured siege squad disembarked, clumping onto the landing pad. They were armoured in Mark III Iron armour, heavily modified for frontal assaults, and each carried a bulky siege shield. They were amongst the most battle-hardened legionaries within the Chapter, often forming the vanguard against armoured fortifications and enemy ships, and while the rate of attrition within their ranks was notoriously high, that was also a mark of honour amongst them. These tough veterans were some of Sor Talgron's premier line-breakers.
'At your command,' said Telakhas, the squad's sergeant. A massive thunder hammer was mag-locked across his back.
The Apostle Jarulek also accompanied the breaker squad. The legionaries bowed their heads as he walked through their ranks, offering him a level of deference that Sor Talgron found distasteful.
Still, he could not dispute the effect the preacher's presence had on his men. Their resolve was visibly bolstered wherever he fought in the battle line, and there had been more than one engagement where the success of the 34th had hinged on his ability to inspire a fanatical zealotry among the legionaries. Sor Talgron mistrusted the way he manipulated the emotions of those who followed him, but he was not fool enough to be blind to the fact the priest served a purpose, and served it well.
Perhaps what rankled most was that while Jarulek would never have the strategic acumen that Sor Talgron commanded, he instinctively knew how to get the best out of the men on the ground — better than Sor Talgron himself. The priest knew the power of well chosen words, and when his fiery rhetoric should be punctuated with action. He inspired them. Sor Talgron was deeply respected by all, but he was not one for speeches or fancy words. He was built for direct action, and while he had a deep-seated aversion to the power of anything as ephemeral as mere words, he knew that this was more of a weakness on his part than a reflection of their lack of worth.
Not that Jarulek was a poor soldier - the opposite, in fact. If he had not been claimed early in his tenure, plucked from the ranks of neophytes and chosen for a Chaplain's ministry, Sor Talgron would have had him commanding a battalion of his own by now. His instincts were good, and they had been further honed in the time that he had spent seconded to Kor Phaeron, acting as one of his war consuls.
Jarulek knew of his misgivings.
'You do not require the rhetoric of faith in order to fight your best,' Jarulek had said to him on the fields of Nalahsa. That day the Dark Apostle had led a savage counter-attack against the greenskins, driving a wedge into the heart of the enemy formations to slay their warlord. That action had won them that war. Both of them had been covered in sticky, foul-smelling greenskin gore. 'That is not your way — and meaning no disrespect, my lord, it is both a strength and weakness. But these warriors,' he had said, gesturing to the victorious legionaries around them, 'they do not have your... singularity of focus. Your resolve. Your pragmatism. They need something more. They need faith and guidance. They fight all the better for it, and without it they would be lost.'
It grated on Sor Talgron that he knew the preacher was right.
He inclined his head to Jarulek now as the preacher made his rounds, stopping to speak in quiet tones to individual warriors, laying a hand upon the shoulder of others. Jarulek bowed to him, lowering his eyes in deference. Sor Talgron turned away.
He commandeered a boarding shield from the newcomers' weapon cache. It was heavy, with an inbuilt refractor field, and it covered a legionary from head to knee. Its surface was black, and it bore evidence of las-scoring and plasma-burns. There were other, newer shields that he could have chosen, but he had an aversion to weapons that had not yet been tempered in battle.
Dal Ahk had remarked, once, that it was just superstition. And he knew tha
t the captain hated anything as pointless as superstition.
Sor Talgron had not deigned to reply. 'You really are a humourless bastard, you know,' Dal Ahk had said. That had got a smile out of him.
There was no hint of levity in the master of signal now, though. He could practically see the scowl on his face for all that he was his battle helm.
'You are going in yourself, then' said Dal Ahk. Any belligerence or disapproval in his tone was rendered indiscernible by his helm's augmitters. Everything was transformed into an angry growl by Legion helms, such that all subtlety in tone and intonation was lost. It was perhaps one of the reasons why Space Marines were so poor at reading irony and sarcasm in unaugmented humans, he thought.
'I am,' said Sor Talgron. 'You are not.' The master of signal said nothing. He didn't need to. 'I need you up here. Keep the communication lines open.'
Dal Ahk saluted and walked away without a word. His disapproval radiated off him like a heat haze.
Sor Talgron locked the boarding shield to his left arm. He felt the humming vibration as the refractor field powered up.
He moved to the edge of the landing platform. In the far distance, the bulk landers hung like vast swollen insects. He stood alone.
'You are a different breed from the rest of the Seventeenth Legion. You are practical and pragmatic, where you brothers are overzealous.'
Dorn's words grated on him. Maybe he had been the right choice to act as the enemy within, but he had loathed every moment of it. He had hated the deception, stealth and falseness that had been demanded of him, and he hated himself for having performed that role so well. He had despised it, but a soldier follows orders. Perhaps Lorgar had chosen well.
There were others within the Legion that hungered for power and would have revelled in the betrayal — Erebus for one. Few saw him for the conniving manipulator that he was. That said, Dorn wouldn't have been taken in by him, of that he was sure.
Sor Talgron had always been surprised that others did not see through the poisonous Chaplain. He had too much influence over the Legion, and his corruption was contagious. Sor Talgron prayed that the snake would not survive Calth.
Prayed. A poor choice of words on his part. He had never prayed a day in his life, not even as a child on Colchis. He was not planning on starting now.
He had seen the same cancer that festered in Erebus within some members of the Chapter. It was not to the same degree as in the other Chapters of the Legion, but it was there, much to his chagrin. It was worse among the newer recruits - those more recently indoctrinated into the XVII seemed more corruptible, more drawn to immersing themselves in the new faith and the lust for power. It did not bode well for the future and he had grave concerns for the Legion. Would it even be recognisable in a decade, or a hundred years hence?
He had done what he could to keep the ranks of the 34th as clean as possible — those he'd judged most inclined to fall to Erebus's corrupting influence had been sent on to Calth. He would not be displeased if none of them came back. It was another purge of the Legion's ranks, in a sense. Not of the scale of the one that had come before, but an important one nonetheless. He did not care if martyrs were made. Cut out the corruption and the whole may be diminished, but the Legion would be the stronger for it in the long run.
He was not normally one to dwell on introspection — at least he had not been before Forty-Seven Sixteen — and he had a task at hand. Less than fifteen minutes had passed when word came from the scouts.
'Four explosive devices disengaged, and the beacon is set,' came Loth's cold whisper in Sor Talgron's ear, breaking his self-imposed vox-silence. 'Power has been restored to the conveyor. On the way topside.'
Moments later, the grinding of mechanical gears announced the carriage beginning its ascent.
'There are enemies back down there,' added Loth. 'Legionaries and Imperial Army.'
'Numbers?'
'Difficult to say, our scanners were being blocked. Not many, but dug in and waiting.'
'Master of Signal,' said Sor Talgron, cutting off his vox-link. 'Does the fleet have a lock on the beacon?'
'They do, captain,' said Dal Ahk. 'They are calibrating now.'
'How long?'
'They will be ready to sequence in seven minutes.'
'What are your orders, my lord?' asked Jarulek, ioining them. 'How are you going to play this?'
'We go down there. We kill everything we find,' he said.
'Good plan,' said Jarulek, with a smile. That smile never touched his eyes, Sor Talgron noted. In his eyes lurked only darkness.
SIX
Korolos knew that true death was coming down the conveyor shaft, and he welcomed it like a friend he thought had long abandoned him.
There was nothing to be feared in death; only failure in life was to be feared. This he had learnt by bitter experience.
Once, his helm had borne the transverse centurion crest of an officer, but no more. He had been marked for greatness, serving first as the champion of the 178th Company, then rising through the officer ranks. Pride had been his downfall. Now, his helm was red with the mark of censure, the mark of his shame. He had woken after Senosia IV to find it had been removed, a cobalt—blue helm fixed in its place, but he had been insistent.
'Your time of penance is passed, old friend,' Chapter Master Levianus had said — this was before young Aecus Decimus had risen to the post. 'You carried that burden long enough. Too long. That fault is mine, and for that I am sorry. You've suffered enough.'
He would have none of it. His honour was forever stained, he said — he could not let it go. The red helm ensured that his dishonour was externalised, plain for all to see, and he would not hear of putting it aside while he still felt the burning shame that ate away at him. That could only be achieved in death.
In the end, they had relented.
He had yearned for this release for more than a century. He could never right the wrongs that he had wrought — he could never bring back the lives of battle-brothers lost through his arrogance and hubris - but perhaps in death he could go some way towards atoning for those mistakes.
All his friends and comrades were dead. All those proud Ultramarines that he had trained with in the academies of Armatura. All those who had been at his side as the Great Crusade pushed out beyond the edges of the map, expanding the domain of the Imperium. All his closest brothers, those he had laughed with, bled with and killed with, all of them were as dust - gone but not forgotten. At least not by him. Even the tough old war-dog, Chapter Master Levianus, was dead and gone, his ashes entombed in the halls of Macragge, placed within a bronze urn at the feet of a seated statue of his likeness.
Only he was left.
He was not alone, not in a literal sense; the handful of legionaries around him, waiting with weapons trained upon the conveyor carriage doors bore the same Chapter livery that bedecked his own armoured form, but he felt little true kinship with them. He had been old by the time they were inducted into the XIII Legion. A relic of the Terran past. They paid him considerable respect — they knew of his battles and triumphs, though he never spoke of them — and they bowed their heads when he walked the decks of the Legion's warships. But that only served to emphasise the gulf that existed between them. They revered him, but in doing so elevated him beyond themselves. There was no true brotherhood between them. How could there be? They could not relate to him any more than he could to them.
The carriage reached the bottom of the shaft, and he clenched his immense powered fists, the servos and gears growling. A sheen of energy flickered over his colossal armoured knuckles, and electricity danced between his tapering fingers. He crouched, ready to attack.
Pistons groaned. Gears turned. Locking devices lifted.
It was time to kill. And then, finally, it would be time to die.
The conveyor doors opened.
Smoke filled the interior of the carriage, concealing the Word Bearers from sight. Sor Talgron heard the metallic clink of grenade
s as they were hurled into the enclosed space, just as he had expected.
'Lock!' he roared, and the siege squad responded instantly. As one, moving in perfectly drilled unison, they dropped to one knee, planting their shields in front of them. They were in close formation, their shields locked, forming a solid barrier. Those in the second rank lifted their shields high, protecting from above, and those on the flanks turned their shields outwards. They butted up against the back of the conveyor carriage, using the reinforced plasteel wall to protect their rear, forming a nigh-on impenetrable shell. On ancient Terra that formation had been utilised by warriors armed only with spear and blade, but it proved equally effective here.
The grenades exploded, filling the space with fire and shrapnel, but the armoured shell held, protecting the legionaries within.
'Shroud!' ordered Sor Talgron, and every second shield in the front line was lifted long enough for blind grenades to be rolled out beneath them, bouncing and skittering into the chamber beyond. Then the shields slammed down again, echoing loudly.
The first bursts of gunfire cut through the smoke, impacting on the inside of the carriage and striking the reinforced shieldwall. Las-fire for the most part. A few bolters.
A smattering of solid, high-velocity shells struck Sor Talgron's own shield, battering against it like a jackhammer, and he was pushed back a step even as he braced against it, feet sliding beneath him. The shield held, and he edged back into line, keeping the wall unbroken.
'Forward!!' he barked, and the formation began to advance.
They moved slowly, one crunching step at a time, and they began to return fire, bolters resting on the edge of the gun ports cut into their upper rims. They directed their shots where tracer-fire gave away the enemies' positions. While they were firing blind, the choking smoke obscuring their vision as much as their foes', their fire was not intended to kill, rather to suppress.
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