Fulgrim

by Graham McNeill

  The greatest of these works would be a mighty picture of him, a magnificently ambitious piece he had commissioned from Serena d’Angelus after seeing the work she had begun to produce in the wake of the victory on Laeran: work so full of vibrancy and emotion that it made his heart ache to see such beauty.

  He had sat for Serena d’Angelus several times since then, but he would need to find the time to engage with her properly when the Diasporex were annihilated.

  Yes, he thought, soon the Pride of the Emperor will echo to the music of creation, and his warriors will carry it to every comer of the galaxy so that all might have a chance to hear such beauty.

  His mood soured as he cast his gaze towards the end of his staterooms and the pile of smashed marble that had been his attempt to create a thing of beauty. Each stroke of the chisel had been delivered with precise skill. The lines of the figure’s anatomy were perfect, and yet… there was something indefinably wrong with the sculpture, something that eluded his understanding. The frustration of it had driven him to inflict violence upon his work, and he had reduced it to rubble with three blows from his silver sword.

  Perhaps Ostian Delafour could instruct him as to what mistakes he was making, though it galled him that he, a primarch, should have to consult a mortal. Wasn’t he created to be the greatest in all things? His other brothers had inherited aspects of their father, but the gnawing doubt that perhaps the accident that had almost destroyed the Emperor’s Children at birth had encoded some hidden defect into his genetic makeup returned to haunt him in the dark watches of the night.

  Was his nature a sham, a thinning veneer of perfection that hid a hitherto unknown core of failure and imperfection? Such doubt was alien to him, yet the horror of it had lodged like a canker in his chest. Already he felt as though events were slipping away from him. The battles on Laer had been vanity, he knew that now, but they had been won and that was what the remembrancers would tell. They would gloss over the appalling casualty figures he had suppressed, but which haunted his dreams with images of the fallen, warriors whose names he knew and memories he cherished. Now Ferrus, rushing off impetuously to engage the Diasporex fleet his scout ships had discovered, was closing in on the solar collectors.

  The familiar anger towards his brother surfaced once again, all thoughts of love and centuries of friendship stained with this latest betrayal.

  He shames you with this display and must he punished.

  JULIUS HEARD THE reports through the vox as they crackled over the speakers and watched the surveyor officers chart the unfolding shape of the battle on the plotter table in lines of glowing green.

  Without consulting the Primarch of the Emperor’s Children, Ferrus Manus had ordered the 52nd Expedition to make all speed for the Carollis Star in response to the Ferrum’s discovery of the solar collectors. The Diasporex had reacted to his rash advance by rushing to recover them. Unlike previous encounters, this was to be no hit and run ambush, but it seemed clear to Julius that without timely aid from the 28th Expedition the ships of the 52nd could not prevent the escape of the Diasporex once more.

  The bridge of the Pride of the Emperor was hushed, the quiet industry of the crew and the chatter of machines the only sound. Julius wished for some noise, something out of the ordinary to highlight to everyone that without Fulgrim’s presence, things were not as they should be. There was a gaping void in the bridge that Fulgrim’s towering leadership normally filled, but the routine of the bridge crew continued as it always did, and he found their insensibility to the primarch’s absence infuriating.

  The captain of the Pride of the Emperor, Lemuel Aizel, a warrior so used to following the orders of his primarch that he had none of his own, had simply sent the ships of the Emperor’s Children after the Iron Hands. Julius could see that he was foundering without the reassuring presence of his lord and master at his side.

  Even his other captains seemed oblivious, and he fought to control his temper at their unappreciative senses. Solomon, only recently returned to full duties, stared intently at the surveyor plot, though he was gratified to see that Marius wore an expression of angry disgust. Julius was becoming unaccountably angry, wishing for something to break the silence and monotony of the bridge, and found himself clenching his fists. He fought the urge to smash those fists into the face of one of the bridge crew, just to feel something beyond the blandness his senses were feeding him.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked Solomon, who stood at his elbow. ‘You look tense.’

  ‘Well of course I’m bloody tense!’ snapped Julius, the sound of his voice a welcome relief from the stress, its very loudness soothing his burgeoning anger. ‘Ferrus Manus has launched his fleet directly at the Diasporex, and we have to catch up and fight a battle without a plan of any perfection.’

  Heads turned at his outburst, and Julius felt a curious elation surge through his body at the feeling. He could see he had shocked Solomon, and felt a delicious thrill at allowing his thoughts to slip the leash of control.

  ‘Calm your jets,’ said Solomon, gripping his arm tightly. ‘Yes, the Iron Hands started without us, but that may work to our advantage if they draw the Diasporex in. We will be the hammer that smashes them on the anvil of the Iron Hands.’

  The thought of battle extinguished his earlier anger, and the thought that it was to be fought without shape or form sent a thrill of anticipation through him.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘This is exactly what we came here for.’

  Solomon stared quizzically at him for a second before turning his attention back to the plotter table. ‘It won’t be long now,’ he said after a moment’s deliberation.

  ‘What won’t?’ asked Marius.

  ‘Bloodshed,’ said Solomon, and Julius felt his pulse quicken.

  TEN

  The Battle of Carollis Star

  Going up the Centre

  New Heights of Experience

  FILLED WITH THE collected energy of a sun, the explosion of the solar collector bloomed like the birth of a new star. Fiery clouds of debris and released potential spread over hundreds of kilometres, shattering warships that had risked passing close to the collector in an attempt to gain some advantage in the battle raging in the star’s corona.

  Nearly a thousand starships jockeyed and manoeuvred above the Carollis Star, each moving in its own intricate ballet as blinding streaks of lance fire and the looping contrails of torpedoes crisscrossed the space between them.

  Finally brought to battle by the Iron Hands, the Diasporex fleet had turned like a beast at bay protecting its young. Heavily armed warships of ancient design formed a cordon around the solar collectors while smaller, faster escorts attempted to run the blockade of Imperial vessels and remove their invaluable charges from the battle.

  Some slipped past, but many more were bracketed by relentless bombardments and reduced to so much scrap metal within moments of being acquired by the gunners of the 52nd Expedition. Fiery explosions flared, blooming brightly as the fires of their deaths ignited the clouds of flammable gasses that filled the space around the star.

  The Fist of Iron led the charge of the Iron Hands, bludgeoning a path through the centre of the Diasporex fleet, and battering the enemy ships with devastating broadsides. Mass drivers and battery after battery hammered the Diasporex ships, and plumes of venting oxygen bled into space from the wounded vessels.

  Spurts of nuclear fire speared up from the surface of the star, clouds of radioactive material following in their wake and wreathing the battle in streaks of light. Smaller fighters and bombers were ripped apart by these random acts of the star’s violence, their ordnance erupting in flames and sending them spinning through space like tumbling meteors.

  An alien warship duelled with the Iron Hands, unknown weapons hurling bolts of energy that melted through the hulls of the Imperial ships, scrambled their weapon systems, or slaved them to the enemy fleet. Confusion reigned as vessels of the Imperial fleet turned their weapons on allied ships, unt
il Ferrus Manus understood what was happening and led the Fist of Iron once more into the thick of the fighting to destroy the enemy ship with a devastating close range torpedo volley.

  The alien vessel broke apart in a rippling flurry of explosions, torn asunder from within as each torpedo smashed through bulkhead after bulkhead before detonating in the heart of its target.

  Despite the best efforts of the Diasporex fleet masters, the cordon of ships thrown out before the solar collectors could not hold back the force of the Iron Hands. Trapped against the furnace of the Carollis Star, the democratic, multi-part confederacy of the Diasporex was proving to be its undoing. Set against the iron leadership of Ferrus Manus, their many captains could not co-ordinate quickly or ingeniously enough to outwit the tactical ferocity of a primarch.

  The fiery halo surrounding the star became the grave of thousands of aliens and humans of the Diasporex as the 52nd Expedition tore through them, venting the anger and fury of the last few months in an unstoppable flurry of battery fire and missiles. Ships of both sides burned, and if it was indeed the end of the Diasporex, then it would be an end worthy of epic tales yet to be written.

  The Ferrum fought at the heart of the battle, Captain Balhaan avenging his earlier failure in the fury of combat. More nimble than many of the warships of the Diasporex, he masterfully worked with the Armourum Ferrus to manoeuvre his vessel to outflank enemy ships and attack them from their vulnerable rear. Devastating battery fire crippled the engines of his prey, and as the Diasporex ships wallowed helplessly the Armourum Ferrus swept in and tore the defenceless vessels apart with point blank broadsides.

  Not that the Diasporex were not reaping a fearsome tally. Although their ships fought as individuals in this battle as opposed to a fleet, it did not take long before a great warship in the centre of the Diasporex fleet began to take charge, a hybridised vessel that bore the hallmarks of human design and embellishments of a grotesque alien nature.

  Even as Ferrus Manus recognised the moment the hybrid vessel took command, the Diasporex fleet again displayed its teeth. Co-ordinated waves of bombers crippled Medusa’s Glory and improbably destroyed the Heart of Gold. A daring boarding action upon the Iron Dream was barely repulsed, though the ship was left helpless and was ultimately destroyed by an almost casual broadside from the hybrid command ship.

  The greatest loss to the Imperial fleet came when the battle-barge Metallus was destroyed by an enemy lance that tore through its reactor core and vaporised it in an explosion that rivalled that of the first solar collector.

  Dozens of nearby ships were caught in the terrifying violence of its destruction, tumbling to their deaths in the star’s fiery embrace. As the nuclear fire of the ship’s demise faded, a gap of empty space was all that remained. The fleet masters of the Diasporex were not slow to see the opportunity this presented.

  Within minutes, the escorts began changing course to lead the precious solar collectors through the gap.

  It was a bold move, and the heavier warships of the Diasporex began to disengage from the fleet of the Iron Hands. It was a bold move indeed, and might have worked, had not the ships of the Emperor’s Children chosen that moment to unmask their presence and begin their own destructive work amongst the ships of the Diasporex.

  THE BOARDING TORPEDO shook with the violence of its delivery, a thundering metal tube hurled through space in a journey that would end either in death or a rush of battle. Though his body still ached, Solomon relished the chance to take the fight to the enemy once more, despite the great unease with which he had greeted Fulgrim’s order that they were to be unleashed on the Diasporex via boarding torpedo.

  Normal Astartes practice for starship assaults called for specialist troops to make lightning hit and run attacks on critical systems, such as the gun decks or engines, before making a rapid withdrawal, but this mission was to capture the command deck and end the battle in one fell swoop.

  Such actions were dangerous at the best of times, but to cross the gulf of space between fighting vessels in the midst of such a furious conflict seemed foolhardy to Solomon.

  Fulgrim had surprised everyone when he had marched onto the bridge at the commencement of the fighting, clad in the full panoply of battle instead of the cloak of a ship’s captain, and surrounded by his Phoenix Guard.

  His armour had been magnificently polished, and Solomon saw many new embellishments worked into the gleaming plates of his greaves. The golden eagle on his breastplate shone with a dazzling brilliance, and his pale features were alight with the prospect of battle. Solomon noticed that, instead of the golden Fireblade, the silver hilted sword he had taken from Laeran was belted at his side.

  ‘Ferrus Manus may have instigated this fight without us,’ Fulgrim had shouted, ‘but by Chemos, he’s not going to finish it without us!’

  A fierce energy had suddenly seized the bridge of the Pride of the Emperor, and Solomon felt it surge from warrior to warrior like an electric current. Julius especially had leapt to obey the primarch’s orders, as had Marius, though with a dogged determination rather than with genuine enthusiasm.

  Rather than complete the destruction of the Diasporex from afar as the tactical position, as far as Solomon could see, would dictate, Fulgrim had elected to take the fight to the Diasporex directly, and ordered the ships of the 28th Expedition to surge forward to engage them at close range.

  Information from the Fist of Iron had revealed the presence and location of the enemy command ship, and Fulgrim had immediately hurled the Pride of the Emperor towards it. Ferrus Manus may have started the fight prematurely, but the Emperor’s Children would win the lion’s share of the glory by ripping the heart from the Diasporex.

  Not only that, but Fulgrim would once again lead them.

  Though at first such a strategy seemed vainglorious to Solomon, he couldn’t deny the thrill he felt as he led his men into harm’s way, despite his loathing of travelling in a boarding torpedo. Gaius Caphen sat opposite him, his eyes fixed on the rudimentary controls that guided their headlong rush through space, and his mind on the battle to come.

  Solomon and the warriors of the Second were to smash into the hybrid vessel first and secure the perimeter, before Fulgrim and the First reinforced their position and pushed through the enemy ship towards the bridge, in order to destroy it with demolition charges. In theory, what little tactical structure remained of the Diasporex fleet would be shattered by the loss of the command ship, and the remainder picked off at the Imperial fleet’s leisure.

  ‘Impact in ten seconds,’ said Caphen.

  ‘Everyone brace!’ ordered Solomon. ‘As soon as the entrance is clear, spread out and kill anything you find. Good hunting!’

  Solomon closed his eyes and hunched down into the brace position as the torpedo slammed into the side of the enemy vessel, the inertial compensators reducing the impact from lethal to merely bone-jarring. He heard the booming thuds as the shaped charges on the torpedo’s nose detonated in sequence, blasting a path through the thick superstructure of the ship.

  The force of the detonations and the howling screech of metal juddered down the length of the torpedo. Solomon felt his vision blur and his freshly healed body protest at the force of their arrival and deceleration. It felt like an age, though it was surely no more than a few seconds, before they stopped, and the last charge on the nose cone blew the front of the torpedo clear. The assault ramp clanged down into a fiery inferno of twisted, blackened metal and ruptured corpses.

  ‘Go!’ bellowed Solomon, slamming the release on his grav harness and surging to his feet. ‘Everyone out! Go!’

  He snatched up his hand-crafted bolter, knowing that this was the most vulnerable portion of any torpedo-borne assault. The shock and horror of their arrival had to be exploited to prevent any resistance from materialising.

  Solomon charged down the ramp into a tall, high vaulted chamber of blackened columns and walls of dark wooden panelling. The wood blazed, and several of the columns groaned
under the weight of the roof, many of the other columns having been destroyed by the impact of the boarding torpedo. Smoke and flames billowed, though the auto-senses of Solomon’s armour easily compensated for the low visibility.

  Charred corpses filled the chamber, torn to shreds by the impact, and other bodies writhed and screamed in agony as flames consumed them. Solomon ignored them, already hearing distant crashes that told him the rest of his company were smashing through the hull of the vessel.

  The warriors of the Second spread out as he saw movement at either end of the chamber, enemy warriors coming to repulse their attack. Solomon grinned as he saw that they were already too late. Flat bangs of bolter fire tore the defenders to their right apart, but an answering volley scythed from the opposite side, punching one of his warriors from his feet with a smoking crater in his chest.

  Solomon turned his own bolter to face the new threat, and fired off a rapid burst of shots that sent a bizarre quadruped creature slumping to the ground. More shots and screams sounded, and within moments, the chamber was alive with booming gunfire and explosions.

  ‘Gaius, take the right and secure it,’ he said, moving off to the other end of the chamber as more of the ship’s crew rushed to plug the breach in their vessel’s defences. Solomon killed another enemy, this time seeing his target properly for the first time, as his warriors forced the enemy back in a crackling hail of bolter rounds.

  Controlled bursts of gunfire cleared the entrances to the chamber of enemies as Solomon examined the corpse of one of the aliens. Gaius Caphen organised the Astartes to secure the chamber from counterattack, and ready it for the arrival of reinforcements.

  The dead alien was a heavily muscled quadruped with ochre skin, scaled like a snake’s, but harder and more chitinous. Portions of its limbs had been augmented with mechanised prosthetics, and its head was elongated. It appeared to be eyeless, its mouth a dark tooth-ringed circle filled with waving feelers. A bizarre armature was affixed to its back, connected via a series of looping cables to its spine and many fingered forelimbs.