by David Annandale, Justin D Hill, Toby Frost, Braden Campbell (epub)
More Astra Militarum tales from blacklibrary.com
YARRICK: IMPERIAL CREED
YARRICK: A PLAGUE OF SAINTS
ANGEL OF FIRE
FIST OF DEMETRIUS
FALL OF MACHARIUS
HONOUR IMPERIALIS
COMMISSAR
FIRST AND ONLY
THE APEX
LESSER EVILS
STRAKEN
It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.
Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Astra Militarum and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants – and worse.
To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.
Prologue
Ascending
The creature climbed the shaft of its prison. Every step of the ascent was hard-won, and the creature’s breath rattled from its lungs in a feral snarl. The sound was swallowed by the splashes and struggles of the scavengers in the depths below. It became one more echo in an eternal, reverberating song of violence.
The journey was slow. The creature didn’t care, for time had no meaning in the well. Here were only darkness, the clash of tooth and claw, and the choking embrace of water thick with the decaying remains of the fallen. The creature was one of the victors. It had beaten down its rivals, always risen to be the predator and not the prey, and now it had risen again, using the bodies of its enemies to make its way up the shaft.
It had prepared its climb with a patience that had nothing to do with enduring the passage of time.
There was no time. There were only teeth. Claws. Meat. Bone. War.
Patience was the embodiment of necessity, of survival. It fought, killed, and worked in the unending night until it was ready and, by feel alone, began its journey.
The creature’s ascent was so painstaking, so gradual, that if it had been seen, it would not have been a threat. But it was not seen. It rose, metre by metre through Stygian black. It had climbed before. It had made too many attempts to count (and counting was meaningless), and on each occasion, it had reached a bit higher before it had had to return to the roiling depths. But this time was going to be different. This time, events would begin once again. The creature would reach the top, and it would bring with it the tearing and death from below.
Black became grey. Above, a circle of dim light grew wider and brighter. The creature’s breathing grew harsher from the strain of effort and the eagerness of rage. It no longer moved solely by touch. It could see. In jerking, spasmodic movements, clumsy but inexorable, it reached the lip of the well. There it paused. It waited, quieting its breath, holding back its snarl even as its killing impulse became so powerful that its entire frame vibrated. It listened to the guards. It tracked the sound of their movements as they strolled back and forth, trading bored insults.
The moment came. Time began. The creature surged out of the well. It roared as it plunged claws into flesh, and feasted on the panic of the guards.
Chapter One
The Grand Illusion
1. Yarrick
I should have expected the Stompa would charge. There were so many things I should have expected. So much for which I will have to answer, on the day the Emperor finally releases me from my service and calls me to His Throne. Most of all, I will have to atone for the sin of underestimating the enemy. This is the very sin I condemned so freely in others, the sin that had almost doomed Armageddon. How could I have failed to heed my own warnings?
I deserve no mercy. But I won’t be alone. There is very little mercy to be granted for the errors of that day.
The clouds were low over the Ishawar Mountains. The clouds were always low on Golgotha, but tonight they had an extra weight, and pressed down on the peaks like an upended sea of tar. They heaved and bulged with the sick promise of dreadful storms. They pulsed with a red glow, and their force was coming down to crush the army of Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka from above, just as mine would on the ground.
I rode in the open turret of the command Chimera. The wind had dropped, the atmosphere holding its breath in advance of the coming storm, and my rebreather was able to keep the worst of Golgotha’s crimson dust from my lungs. We were moving into the foothills of the mountain chain. We had been pursuing the orks for days, grinding at them, pushing them deeper into the Ishawar range, into ever narrower valleys and passes. Open terrain was where their numbers, still greater than ours, could be most effectively brought to bear against our armour. So we didn’t give them a chance. We blasted through the plains and plateaux, a storm of fire and steel that never stopped, never let up. We had the greenskins in retreat. I was coming for Thraka. Years after he had profaned Armageddon, I finally had him cornered. Years of searching, years of being just a step behind him, hitting planet after planet just days after he had departed, world after world that had nothing left to devastate. But I had caught up to him. He was here, on Golgotha, leading the routed horde ahead. I knew he was.
He had to be. This was my last chance to stop him.
He. Him. Thraka had long since ceased to be an it in my mind. To reduce him would be to underestimate him, and underestimating him had one guaranteed result: doom. I had seen what he was capable of on Armageddon. I had seen what he had done since, as I followed his trail of devastation through the galaxy. It was an article of faith that the orks were unthinking brutes. It was one of the human race’s sole consolations when faced with their numbers, their strength and their endurance: at least the orks were stupid. But not Thraka. The invasion of Armageddon had not been a simple-minded affair. Some of the strategies Thraka had employed had been brilliant. Inspired. And he had made moves since then that not only might as well have been signed, they had been aimed at me, personally.
I had a nemesis. We were facing each other over a regicide board the size of the galaxy.
To admit this was disgusting. To deny it would be criminally foolish. And utterly political.
For the political mind, the years of my search had been an eternity. Attention is difficult to sustain, and easy to lose to the next new and urgent conflict. Each new emergency obliterates the memory of all others. Every year that passed without a new attack on Armageddon meant the danger was that much more remote. There were so many other urgencies of war calling. Spending time, treasury and men in the pursuit
of a spent force was nonsensical.
It was perfectly true that there was no shortage of dire threats to the Imperium. I would never be so foolish as to minimise them. But it was perfectly false that Thraka was a spent force. It was suicidal to think so. He was a threat that was unlike anything else in the galaxy, and the fact that we had driven him away from Armageddon changed nothing. He had almost hammered a spike through the heart of the Imperium. That should have been reason enough to devote all necessary resources to his elimination. But what was worse, if such a thing were possible, was that if there was ever to be an ork warboss who could unite the entire barbaric species, then Thraka was that ork. As much as it disgusted me even to articulate the thought, there was a monstrous truth that had to be faced: Thraka had the potential to become the ork emperor.
That possibility should have been obvious to the greenest trooper. It probably was. But for too many in the high places, whether lords or admirals or generals, it seemed to be a possibility too awful to contemplate. Better to pretend it did not exist. Easier to believe it was impossible that the orks would ever follow a single leader, and so destroy us all. So much nicer to bury your head in the sand, and avoid all the fuss and bother of actually doing something about Thraka.
I had to fight tooth and nail for every tank, every rifle, and every man of my army, every single day since the enthusiasm for the crusade had evaporated in its second year. Somehow, I found men of will, intelligence and vision. But they weren’t enough. I also needed men of influence, and for the sake of a mission so important that no compromise should have been brooked, I had been forced to do just that. There were many – too many – colonels with me who held their ranks by the sole virtue of their noble birth. Our venture had been plagued by mistakes, accidents and idiotic judgement calls. But numbers, faith and weaponry had seen us through. Even Golgotha, which waged war against us with dust and storm as viciously as any greenskin horde, could not stop us.
Now the orks were running. Now Thraka was at bay.
Thunder, deep-throated as an earthquake, boomed in the distance ahead. The Baneblades were unleashing hell upon the orks. The flashes of their bombardment were bigger and brighter than the anger in the clouds. I wanted to be at the front with those magnificent tanks. When we had mustered on the Hadron Plateau, I had climbed on top of one of them to address the regiments. Vox-units relayed my words to the entire army, but the image I presented to all within viewing range was important, too. Throne, but I knew the importance of image. I also knew its curse and its weight. Doing what had to be done, I chose the Fortress of Arrogance as my pulpit. Even among the glories of the Baneblades, it stood out. It was a weapon of peerless art, a masterpiece of war. In keeping with its name, it disdained camouflage. Instead, it was black as the void. It was the very idea of power, summoned into material being and given metal form. It even had a true pulpit on its turret. When I stood there, I felt the strength of the tank surging through my blood. When I spoke, it was with the fire of true inspiration. I descended from the Fortress of Arrogance with a regret that bordered on bereavement.
Now I gazed with longing in the direction of the choir of tanks. But the Chimera had been outfitted for mobile command, and it was not strong enough to be at the tip of the spear. Communications on Golgotha were difficult at best, and I had to remain within the limited vox-range of as much of the force as possible. So I had to content myself with seeing the flashes of our strikes, and hearing the booming drumbeat of our advance.
I was not content. But I was satisfied. Baneblades were a rare prize, and the mere fact that we had more than one was a significant victory in itself. They more than justified every deal, compromise, and soul-wearying bargain I had made. They were turning Thraka’s army into pulp and cinder. The orks had nothing that could stand up to them. Not here, anyway. Not within useful range.
More war thunder, like an answer to the Baneblades, both larger and more distant, and this time from behind. I looked back the way we had come. Kilometres beyond the marching troops and growling vehicles, beyond the line of hills we had crossed hours before, visible only as blurred silhouettes in the grit of the Golgothan atmosphere, gods clashed. Our Titans grappled with their debased ork counterparts. The official designation of the ork machines was Gargant. The word was ugly, dismissive, and deliberately so. The Officio Strategos did not seek to dignify the enemy, nor should it have. But there was nothing to dismiss in the danger that the Gargants represented. They were colossal totemic monsters. As the Warlord-class Titans were to men – the human form rendered sublime in size and destructive power – so the Gargants were to the orks. They were tributes to the savage gods of the greenskins, towering, lumbering, barrel-shaped mountains of steel and cannon. They could have reduced all of our regiments to ash. The Titans had engaged them, and the giants had been locked in hellish stalemate for two days now. We had moved through that battlefield like a trail of ants. I had felt insignificant, my actions a trivial grace note to the awful symphony of the giants. I had been privileged to witness, once more, the struggle of myths, and had been humbled. To see the Warlords stride over our columns was to feel an awe so great, it moved many troopers to tears.
We had pushed past them. We needed momentum above all. If we could take out Thraka, the ork resistance would collapse. So we had left the god-machines behind. The fury of their war followed us, light and sound rolling over us like the death-cries of suns. But theirs was not the vital heart of the war. Their battle, in the end, was a parenthesis. Thraka was not there.
With me, backing up the Baneblades, were three regiments. Immediately behind the superheavies came the 52nd armoured regiment of Aighe Mortis. Following them, scouring the planet of any remaining xenos trace, were the 117th Armageddon mechanised infantry and the 66th Mordian infantry. Hundreds of vehicles, thousands and thousands of men, the pride of the Imperium marching with purpose and discipline, exterminating savagery with faith. They were a sight that could move a stone to song. When I close my eye, I can still see them with a clarity as sharp as pain.
The waste sickens me.
There was a tap on my lower leg. I dropped into the Chimera’s compartment. Space that would normally have held twelve troopers had been cut in half by vox-equipment and map tables. Even with the powerful units here, communications were hit-and-miss. Golgotha’s dust eroded transmissions the same way it did lungs and engines. Anything farther than a few thousand metres, perhaps a bit more with exceptional line of sight, was hopelessly unreliable. It had been necessary to establish a relay system stretching all the way back to the landing site on the Hadron Plateau. It was a precarious line, ridiculously stretched and vulnerable, but there had been no time to come up with an alternative. It was working, though. Imperfectly, but with just enough reliability to make coordination of the entire expedition possible.
‘It’s Colonel Rogge, commissar,’ vox-officer Lieutenant Beren Diethelm told me.
‘Here we go,’ Erwin Lanner, at the Chimera’s steering levers, called out.
I made sure the vox-unit wasn’t transmitting as I took it from Diethelm. ‘Sergeant,’ I told Lanner, ‘you are displaying appalling disrespect for a superior officer.’
Over the vibrating rumble of the engine, I couldn’t hear Lanner snort, but I knew he had. He was a short, squat man with arms whose strength and reach had been the doom of many an ork and unthinking sparring partner. His face was narrow, and his features had been sharp until accumulations of scar tissue had turned them into a gnarled fist. He had been with me since Armageddon, and his insubordination was matched only by his loyalty. I had never met anyone less intimidated by a commissar’s uniform. He had no reason to be. If every Guardsman were equal to Lanner in bravery, skill and faith, we would have cleansed the galaxy of our enemies centuries ago. He should have risen far beyond sergeant, but he had refused to leave my side. The idea of someone else driving my conveyance, whatever it might be, was, for him, a personal affront. He ha
d turned down one promotion after another, and when he was not given a choice, he indulged in such egregious misbehaviour that not only did he ensure that he remained as he was, only my intervention saved him from summary execution. For my pains, my reward was a barrage of outrages too studied to be real. They were theatre for my benefit, and it was a theatre that I needed, especially since Armageddon. It was one thing to be aware of one’s own legend. Lanner made sure I didn’t believe in it.
The sergeant had no faith in Colonel Kelner Rogge. I understood. Rogge commanded a fourth regiment, the rearguard of our principle advance. The Aumet 23rd Armoured had been acquired at a price, and being saddled with the inexperienced sixth son of High Lord Gheret Rogge of Aumet was that price. Colonel Rogge had been with us a year and he had, to my pleasant surprise, acquitted himself well. Lanner remained sceptical, but I knew he would never forgive Rogge the sin of his noble blood. What even Lanner could not take from Rogge was his commitment to our cause. I had assumed, during the negotiations with the father, that the Lord of Aumet’s goal had been the prestigious placement of a son who was far enough down the line of inheritance that his loss could be risked, but whose path still had to bring honour to the family name. Within minutes of meeting the colonel, I realised that I had been wrong. He wanted to be part of my crusade as much as I needed Aumet’s tanks. Kelner Rogge believed in what we were doing. He didn’t have the experience, but he had the fire.
The rearguard mission might not have been the sort that would stoke that fire, but it minimised the risk that a novice colonel presented to the rest of the army. We had a large reserve of Leman Russ battle tanks to draw upon, and all I asked of Rogge was that he keep pace and protect our rear. Lanner, I knew, was expecting Rogge to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory at the earliest opportunity. He hadn’t yet. But the sergeant’s view of things was, on a number of fronts, so close to my own that I couldn’t avoid a slight wave of apprehension as I spoke into the vox. ‘Go ahead, colonel.’