by Nick Kyme
Chapter Six
Aboard the Valin’s Revenge, forty-seven years after the Black Reach Campaign
It had been a long time since Scipio had visited the reclusiam. The chamber was dark, lit by guttering candles ensconced in the mouths of votive cyber-skulls. Flickering firelight seemed to animate their grisly features.
‘I have been your Chaplain for over a year and this is the first time I’ve seen you in the Emperor’s presence.’
Scipio finished his benedictions, stood and turned to face the speaker.
Elianu Trajan was standing opposite, framed by the reclusiam’s narthex. The arch was inscribed with holy rubrics and catechisms, and there was a stylised effigy of the primarch at its apex to bring it all together.
Scipio bowed. ‘Brother-Chaplain.’
‘Brother Vorolanus.’ Trajan, like Scipio, was dressed in a supplicant’s robes. His were black to match the hue of his battle-plate and had a cowl in lieu of a helmet. His crozius mace hung from a hook attached to a thick leather belt and his Chaplain’s rosarius fell to his broad chest suspended from a gilded chain.
Aside from the tools of his office, Trajan did not favour ostentation. Devotion was another matter and his simple power armour was festooned with purity seals and scripture parchment, oaths of moment and votive chains.
He waited in silence, not moving.
Scipio felt suddenly uncomfortable. ‘Do you wish to ask me something, Brother-Chaplain?’
Trajan’s eyes were penetrating. Embers seemed to smoulder behind the pupils.
‘Just this – why?’
‘Why what?’
The Chaplain’s eyes hardened, and the embers became a sharp flame conveying his annoyance.
‘I am not one of your battle-brothers, nor am I a fellow sergeant. I am your Chaplain, Brother Vorolanus, and won’t tolerate games. Answer the question.’
Scipio’s mouth became a hard line. Despite the fact he’d been with the company for over a year, Scipio had not yet found an accord with Trajan. Where Orad had been quiet and reflective, Trajan was direct and exacting. He bullied faith, rather than preached it. A supreme warrior, as fiery and zealous as any Chaplain Scipio had known, but hard to like.
‘I have observed the requisite devotions…’
‘Just not in my sight. Chaplain Orad served this Chapter with distinction. His death was a tragedy, as are the deaths of all true sons of Guilliman, but I am here now and I alone minister to the purity of this company.’
Scipio’s gaze narrowed. He tried not to make a fist.
‘What are you suggesting?’
Trajan smacked him hard across the cheek, and the shock of it felled the sergeant to one knee.
‘I don’t suggest. I decree and act,’ he snapped.
Scipio found the crozius pressing on his shoulder as he went to rise.
‘Stay down,’ Trajan warned, ‘I am not finished.’
The Chaplain’s face glowered behind the shadows of his cowl. ‘Your captain and I have known each other for many long years. He speaks highly of your actions on Black Reach, as does Master Telion, so I shall assume you have yet to show me the same qualities that inspired praise in them.’
‘If I displease you, I apologise.’
Trajan rapped Scipio hard on the shoulderblade, drawing a scowl from the sergeant’s mouth and blood from his body.
‘Don’t mock or pander to me, Brother Vorolanus. You are already testing my wrath.’
Scipio’s teeth were gritted. To strike a fellow son of Guilliman was heinous if done without just cause; to strike a member of the Chaplaincy under any circumstances was unconscionable. He bowed his head, allowing the anger to subside.
Trajan continued. ‘Your disaffection has been noted, as has your absence from my ministrations. I will not tolerate it. Orad’s ways are not my ways. You will learn to value them and venerate me as your spiritual leader. Are we clear on this, Scipio?’ Trajan dug the sharp edge of the crozius into Scipio’s flesh to help make his point.
Scipio maintained his position of penitence and nodded.
Trajan nodded back. ‘Being a sergeant carries certain expectations that you will meet. Now,’ he added, lifting the crozius. It left a bloody trail. ‘I go to the battle cages. You should work that anger out. Meet me there once you’re done here, if you wish, but regardless let this be the last time we exchange words.’
Then he was gone, headed to the training deck.
Scipio never joined him.
‘What do you think that is?’
Ortus was pointing at something in the distance – a series of large, pyramidal silhouettes.
‘Designation: Monolith.’ Largo had the scopes and was using them to get a closer look. ‘And something else.’ He handed the magnoculars to his sergeant.
Through the elliptical lens, Scipio saw the three monoliths that Largo had identified. They were moving ponderously, levitating just above the ground on an anti-gravitic energy pulse. Slab-sided, metallic and inscribed with necron runes they looked more like mobile obelisks than battle tanks. Scipio had yet to see one in combat. Given their fearsome weapons array and eldritch crystal power matrix, glowing at the pyramid’s summit, he had no wish to. A portal of light shimmered in the front arc of each monolith, emerald like the gauss-technology and rippling as if fluidic. Even without Mechanicus indoctrination, he knew this was some form of energy gate.
The other machinery Largo had pointed out was larger and of a similar design. It was some kind of alpha-monolith. Lightning arcs crackled between it and the other lesser pyramids, suggesting it as a sort of power node.
‘Looks like a capacitor, something to focus the firepower of the other war machines.’ He gave the magnoculars back to Largo.
Ortus’s face was grim. ‘Moving away from the artillery, too,’ his jaw hardened, ‘bound for Kellenport.’
Scipio was already on the move again. ‘It gets us no closer to breaching the defensive cordon around the heavy guns. Tigurius can relay a message once we return to camp with better news.’
The comm-feed in his ear crackled.
‘Thracian, this is Retiarii.’
‘Go ahead, Brakkius.’
He was whispering. ‘A necron static outpost. Forty-two metres north of our position.’
‘Status, brother?’
‘Hunkered down and undetected. We have eyes on six targets, Raider-class construct.’
‘Swarms?’
‘Negative, sir.’
Scipio muted the link and turned to the others. They were proceeding across a narrow pass and had pressed their bodies against the cliff wall. Heavy snowfall effectively whited-out their armour, forming a natural camouflage.
‘Why would the mechanoids garrison an outpost? It makes no sense.’
Largo’s broad forehead creased with thought. ‘Unless they are defending something.’
‘But not artillery,’ said Scipio.
Largo smiled and nodded. ‘A way into the mountains.’
‘Precisely.’ He racked his bolt pistol’s slide, checking the load. Enough for a skirmish.
‘I’m tired of skulking in the ice and wind.’ He un-muted the comm-feed, telling Brakkius to observe and wait, then he raised Cator and gave him the coordinates so the Thunderbolts could converge on the outpost’s position.
Scipio gave a feral smile before they moved out. ‘Brothers, we have our opening.’
Scipio clenched his fist as he listened to Cator’s report over the comm-feed.
‘Venetores delayed. Route impassable. Doubling back.’
‘How long?’
‘Approximately twenty-two minutes, brother-sergeant.’
Shaking his head, Scipio eyed the necron garrison. Just as Brakkius had said: six raider constructs, no heavy guns, elites or swarms. Six of Second Company against the mechanoid foot soldier. Scipio d
idn’t want to wait any longer. The outpost could be reinforced or they might miss their assault window.
‘Ortus.’ Scipio pointed to a shallow ledge behind a cluster of boulders.
The Ultramarines were below the outpost, hiding in the basin of an ice trench. Sharp crags further obscured their vantage point. The ledge was slightly off-centre of a narrow gorge that fed up to the necron bastion – a functional obelisk-like structure with a small chute at the summit, its sides like the petals of a partially open flower – and offered a clear line of sight for Ortus’s deadly aim. Rivulets of frozen meltwater swathed the path up to the structure. Scipio thought he saw faces beneath the ice and wondered briefly what it must be like to have human limitations, to be at the mercy of the elements. Slain by the fickle nature of your own world – it was dishonourable.
Ortus got into his firing position immediately and was already sighting his bolter as Scipio outlined the rest of the plan.
He utilised battle-sign. Retiarii would attack from the road, drawing the necrons out and into Ortus’s crosshairs. Thracian would flank, low and quick, and attack once the garrison was committed.
Telion had often extolled the virtues of ‘divide and conquer’ as a strategy. It enabled a smaller force to outmanoeuvre and outgun a larger or better defended one. Here, Scipio intended to split the necrons’ attention by first having them focus on Brakkius’s squad, then Ortus and finally his own.
Scipio reckoned on an estimated total engagement time of thirteen seconds.
He didn’t consider another of Telion’s maxims, however: ‘Always assume the enemy knows something you don’t.’
Chapter Seven
Praxor saw the Stormcaller a split second after Sicarius.
They had known one of the minor necron lords was present in the vanguard; the further the Ultramarines had forged beyond the Kellenport walls, the more that emerald lightning had cracked the sky open.
It was a harbinger, this one, and a billowing tempest preceded him.
‘Twilight falls upon Kellenport and all of Damnos,’ uttered Agrippen, his booming voice as deep as the necron thunder.
A stricken tank company, one of the Guard’s last few on Damnos, fought valiantly in the wastes but they were alone and engulfed by the eldritch storm. Searchlights mounted to their cupolas strafed the darkness, trying to lock onto targets, but this was no ordinary twilight. There was no way to penetrate it. Creatures writhed around in the lightning and the wind, at once solid and incorporeal. Praxor had fought the wraiths before and nearly been killed. What chance did human men have against such things?
He watched with narrowed eyes as the gale overtook the battlefield and pressed in on the Ultramarines. Even the steel plate of a Leman Russ battle tank was no proof against the ghost-like necrons who phased through their hulls. Praxor could only imagine the horror of the crews within as they were slain.
The cobalt giants were unmoved, both by the storm and the futile plight of the armoured company. Slowly, the rattle of pintle-mounts subsided and the flash of muzzle-flares decreased. Even the churn of turrets and the booming report of their cannons became silenced.
‘They are beyond our aid, brother.’
Standing at Praxor’s side, Trajan’s face was a grim and emotionless mask of sculpted bone as he placed a conciliatory hand on the sergeant’s shoulder guard.
Praxor wanted to shrug it off. Elianu Trajan was colder than the Damnos arctic wind. He let it linger, though, using the moment to observe the battlefield.
Kellenport’s defences were based on a series of three octagonal walls. Each was punctuated by several towers and fortified bunkers. Each had three gates: south, west and north. The east side of the city – and it was a vast megalopolis – was completely sealed off, its byways filled, its roads mined and razor-wired. Between each wall was a stretch of land. They had once been districts: commercial, residential, military and religious. Now they were ruins; ash and debris flattened in the necron advance, crushed in the sprawl of war.
From his Tactica briefings, Praxor knew the Damnos naval asset, the Nobilis, had bombarded some of these outer regions with torpedoes before it was destroyed by the artillery in the Thanatos Hills. The then lord governor had balanced the collateral damage against the severity of the blow it would strike against the necrontyr. No doubt it had bought them some time, and such desperate courage was hard to ignore – without it, the Ultramarines might have landed on a world already subjugated by the soulless machines. But ultimately, it had not saved them and condemned thousands to plasma-death.
Their charred corpses paved the roads and haunted the ruins now, despite the eager snowfall that sought to blanket them with its white veil.
To reach this point, at the threshold of the third defensive wall, Sicarius had led them on a killing spree. Large sections of the necron primary awakeners, as they were designated by Imperial codifiers, had been destroyed but nothing remained as testimony to it. This fact gnawed at Praxor, making him feel the death of Vortigan more acutely.
When we are slain, we stay dead. The necrons merely disappear. How do I know I am not fighting the self-same enemy over and again?
Perhaps that’s why Trajan had singled him out for benediction first. It was the only reason Sicarius had attacked already – he desired the blessing of his Chaplain. Perhaps Trajan knew of Praxor’s doubts. He had a gift for it, he of the Black, spotting the chinks in a warrior’s armour of faith.
Praxor’s expression was firm. ‘I am resolved, Brother-Chaplain.’
The armoured company was all but obliterated from sight now. The small pockets of Guard fighting desperately around the vestiges of the city’s defences were gradually being eradicated by the meticulous enemy. Once they were finished with the humans, the necrons would focus their full attention on Second Company. Sicarius had been right to strike hard and strike swiftly.
Praxor heard the captain speaking as he was anointed by Trajan.
‘We stand as the lonely bastion, the last resistance of an Imperial world.’ He stared into the ever-expanding void of necron-fuelled night, his helm in the crook of his arm so his charges could see his noble countenance. His gaze was unswerving like steel, his purpose violent and obvious. ‘It was settled in the halcyon days of the Great Crusade, when gods walked amongst us, by our ancestors and the progenitors of our Chapter. Let us not falter in their sight, nor allow the blood they shed for Damnos to be in vain.’
He drew the Tempest Blade – a storm to match a storm – and singled out the necron lord in the midst of the lightning. Replacing his battle-helm, Sicarius growled into the comm-feed.
‘Follow me into the stygian night and let no fleshless horrors stay the fury of the Second. Victoris Ultra!’
The storm proper had reached them at last. It broke in waves of dense black cloud, roiling in a spectral wind. Lightning cascaded from the sky, emerald green and as unnatural as those who harnessed it. An otherworldly zephyr whipped at the captain’s cape and crest. It stirred the purity seals and oath parchments on his armour.
Sicarius charged. The Tempest Blade ignited with a fire redolent of older, greater days.
The others followed, ready to fight and die.
Praxor’s doubts, his misgivings about the indestructible foe, vanished in the face of Sicarius’s bravura and dauntless courage. Basking in the reflected light of a true hero, he cried out until his lungs burned and the air turned hot with bolter-fury.
They all did; every glorious one of them.
‘Victoris Ultra!’
Praxor stayed close to the captain and his Lions, using the resplendent glow of the blade as a beacon. He made to speak but the hellish wind robbed him of his voice. He tried again, bellowing to the Shieldbearers. ‘Keep to the sword.’
Upon entering the maelstrom, the comm-feed had died. It wasn’t wracked by static interference – it had simply ceased to be. A shroud had
been cast over them and all within was deafening silence. Except it wasn’t, not quite. The wind whipped and billowed, so loud it shrieked. Voices, cold and mechanical, hollow and pleading, manifested on the chilling breeze. Flecks of earth and pieces of debris churned about in the night-black storm the necron lord had weaved.
A heavy flash overloaded Praxor’s retinal display as bolt-lightning forked earthwards in a jagged trajectory. One of the Lions was struck, lit up in cruciform like a human torch. He shuddered, emerald energy wreathing his body, before he crumpled in a smoke-drooling mess and never moved again.
Brother Halnior was dead.
A second bolt arrowed through the night, and ripped a ferocious line in the blackness. It cratered the ground then leapt into Etrius.
A flare, magnesium-bright, saturated the storm cloud edging it in white. At its core was Etrius. The Ultramarine was lifted off his feet, the lightning tendrils like a puppet-master’s strings animating him jerkily.
A low foom battered Praxor’s auditory canal and he was pitched into the air with the sudden shockwave. Time slowed in that terrible moment. His arm, going to shield his eyes, moved as if through gelatine. His legs, flung away from the blast, moved with all the purpose of sodden sand struggling through the neck of an hourglass. Belatedly he realised Etrius’s spare ammo had exploded. It turned him into a fireball.
Hitting the ground hard jolted Praxor around and time rushed back, urgent and filled with smoke and agony. Hurrying to his feet, he tackled his battle-brother out of the inferno.
Etrius lived, but was barely able to nod as he left his ruined bolter behind. He pulled a bolt pistol from his weapons belt and nodded again to show he was ready to fight on.
But the lightning arc wasn’t done. Four more times it struck the earth, tearing holes in the ice and scorching the ground. No one else was felled by the blasts, but it seared battle-plate and cut blackened scars into shoulder guards. The Ultramarines’ impetus had been slowed.
The wraiths detached themselves from the darkness as if it were an entity and they its cellular defences. Serpentine and sinuous, they advanced on the Ultramarines with a terrifying grace and fluidity.