Bequa stood from her instrument, her chest heaving with exertion and an expression of fury plastered across her face.
She stared thunderously at the nobleman and said, 'I do not play for such pigs!'
The man stood angrily from his seat, his features flushed. 'You insult me, woman. I am Paljor Dorji, sixth Marquis of the Terawatt Clan and a patrician of Terra. You will show me some damned respect!'
Bequa spat on the wooden floor and said, 'You are what you are by an accident of birth. What I am, I created myself. There are thousands of nobles of Terra, but there is only one Bequa Kynska.'
'I demand you play on, woman!' shouted Paljor Dorji. 'Do you have any idea how many strings I had to pull to have myself assigned to this expedition in order to hear you play?'
'I neither know nor care,' snapped Bequa. 'Genius such as mine is worth any price. Double it, triple it, you have not even begun to place a value on what you have heard tonight. But it is irrelevant, for I shall play no more this day.'
A chorus of denials filled the air as the audience begged for her to resume playing. Ostian found his voice joined with that of the audience. It appeared, however, that Bequa Kynska was not to be swayed until a powerful voice at the door to the recital chamber cut through the clamour and said, 'Mistress Kynska.'
All heads turned at the commanding sound of the voice and Ostian felt his pulse quicken as he saw who had stilled the crowd: Fulgrim, the Phoenician.
The Primarch of the Emperor's Children was the most magnificent being Ostian Delafour had ever laid eyes upon. His amethyst-coloured armour shone as though fresh from the armourer's hand, its golden trims gleaming like the sun, and exquisite carvings twisted in spiral patterns on every plate of his armour. A long, scaled cloak of emerald green hung from his shoulders, a high collar of purple and the great eagle's wing sweeping over his left shoulder perfectly framing his pale features.
Ostian longed to render Fulgrim's face in marble, knowing that the coolness of the stone was perfect for capturing the luminosity of the primarch's skin, the wide, friendly eyes, the hint of a smile playing around his lips and the shimmering white of his shoulder length hair.
Ostian and the remainder of the audience dropped to their knees in awe of Fulgrim's majesty, humbled by perfection they would never come close to achieving.
'If you will not play for the marquis, would you consent to do so for me?' asked Fulgrim.
Bequa Kynska nodded and the music began anew.
The battle on Atoll 19 would later be described as a minor, opening skirmish in the Cleansing of Laeran: a footnote to the fighting that was yet to come, but to the warriors in the speartip of Solomon Demeter's Second Company of Emperor's Children, it felt considerably more intense than a skirmish.
Shrieking bolts of hot, green energy flashed down the curving thoroughfare, melting portions of the angled walls and dissolving Astartes battle plate whenever they struck one of the advancing Space Marines. The hungry crackle of fires and the whoosh of missiles mingled with the hard bangs of bolter fire and the shrieking horns from the coral towers as Solomon's Astartes fought their way up the serpentine street to link with Marius Vairosean's squads.
Coiled towers of glittering crystal coral reared above him like the gnarled conch shells of some great sea creature, with smooth rimmed burrow holes piercing the spires like the touch holes of a musical instrument. The entire atoll was formed from the same lightweight, but incredibly tough material, though how these structures floated above the vast oceans was a mystery the Mechanicum adepts were eager to solve.
Screeching cries echoed from the disturbingly alien architecture, as though the spires themselves were screaming, and the damnable metallic slither of the aliens' movement seemed to come from all around them.
He ducked back behind a sinuous column of pink veined coral and slammed another magazine into his customised bolter, its every surface and internal working hand-finished by his own artifice. Its rate of fire was only marginally faster than a regular issue bolter, but it had never once jammed, and Solomon Demeter wasn't the kind of man to trust his life to anything he hadn't worked towards perfection.
'Gaius!' he shouted to his second in command, Gaius Caphen, 'Where in the name of the Phoenician is Tantearon squadron?'
His lieutenant shook his head, and Solomon cursed, knowing that the Laer had probably intercepted the Land Speeder squadron en route to them. Damn, these aliens were clever, he thought, remembering the grievous loss of Captain Aeson's flanking force, which had revealed that the Laer had somehow managed to compromise their vox-net. The idea of a xenos species with the ability to wreak such a violation on a Legion of the Astartes was unthinkable, and had only spurred Fulgrim's warriors to greater heights of wrath in their extermination.
Solomon Demeter was the very image of an Astartes, his short dark hair kept shaved close to his scalp, his skin tanned from the light of a score of suns, and his animated features rounded and wide spread on thick cheekbones. He disdained the wearing of a helmet to prevent the Laer from deciphering his orders over the vox-network, and because he knew that if he were hit in the head by one of the Laer weapons, he was as good as dead, helmet or not.
Knowing he could not expect any immediate help from the aerial units, he knew they were going to have to do this the hard way. Though it railed against his sense of order and perfection to undertake this assault without the proper support in place, he couldn't deny that there was something exhilarating about making things up as he went along. Some commanders said that it was an inevitable fact that they would often fight without the forces they wanted, but such a belief was anathema to most of the Emperor's Children.
'Gaius, we're going to have to do this ourselves!' he shouted. 'Make sure we've plenty of fire keeping those xenos heads down!'
Caphen nodded and began issuing curt, concise orders, with sharp chops of his hand, to the squads spread through the rabble of what could laughingly be called their landing zone.
Behind them, the wrecked Stormbird still burned from where the alien missile had blown off its wing, and Solomon knew that it was a miracle the pilot had managed to coax the stricken aircraft to stay in the air long enough to reach the floating atoll. He shuddered to imagine their fate had they plunged to the vast planetary ocean below, lost forever amid the sunken ruins of the Laer's ancient civilisation.
The Laer had been waiting for them, and now at least seven warriors were down and would never fight again. Solomon had no idea how the other assault units had fared, but couldn't imagine they had suffered any less. He risked a glance around the column, its height oddly distorted by the eye-watering curves and subtly wrong dimensions. Everything on this atoll jarred upon his sensibilities, a riotous excess of colour, form and noise that offended the senses with their sheer frenzy.
He could see a wide plaza ahead, in which a flaring plume of searing energy was enclosed by a ring of bright coral that shone with a dazzling light. Dozens of such strange plumes were spread throughout the atolls, and the Mechanicum adepts believed that it was these peculiar devices that prevented the atolls from falling from the sky.
With no major landmasses on Laeran, capturing the atolls intact was deemed integral to the success of the coming campaign. The atolls would serve as bridgeheads and staging areas for all further assaults, and Fulgrim himself had declared that the energy plumes keeping the atolls in the air were to be captured at any cost.
Solomon caught glimpses of Laer warriors slithering around the base of the energy plume, their movements sinuous and inhumanly quick. First Captain Kaesoron had personally tasked the Second with securing the plaza, and Solomon had sworn an oath in the fire that he would not fail.
'Gaius, take your men right and work your way through cover towards the plaza. Keep your head down. They're sure to have warriors positioned to stop you. Send Thelonius on the left.'
'What about you?' Caphen shouted back over the din of gunfire, 'Where are you going?'
Solomon smiled. 'Where els
e but the centre? I'm going to take Charosian's lot, but make sure Goldoara are in position before I move. I don't want anyone moving before we've set down a weight of fire so heavy I could walk on it.'
'Sir,' said Caphen, 'without wishing to appear impertinent, are you sure that's the right choice?'
Solomon racked the slide on his bolter and said, 'You fuss too much over making the "right" choice, Gaius. All we need do is make a good choice, see it through and accept the consequences.'
'If you say so, sir,' said Caphen.
'I do!' shouted Solomon. 'We may not be able to do it by the book this time, but by Chemos, we'll do it well! Now pass the word.'
Solomon waited as his orders were issued to the warriors under his command, and felt the familiar thrill of excitement as he prepared to take the fight to the enemy once more. He knew that Caphen disapproved of his cavalier attitude, but Solomon firmly believed that only through such testing circumstances could warriors better themselves and so more closely approach the perfection embodied by their primarch.
Sergeant Charosian edged up behind him, his veteran warriors gathered around him in the shadow of a Laer burrow complex.
'Ready, sergeant?' asked Solomon.
'Indeed, sir,' replied Charosian.
'Then let's go!' shouted Solomon as he heard Goldoara squad open up with their support weapons. The bark and thump of heavy calibre shells thundering up the road was the sound he'd been waiting for, and he slid from the cover of the pillar and charged up the centre of the street towards the crackling energy tower.
Bolts of deadly green energy flashed past him, but he could tell they were not aimed, the weight of suppressing fire keeping the aliens from showing themselves. He heard gunfire from either side of him and knew that Caphen and Thelonius were having to fight their way towards the tower. The veteran Space Marines of Charosian followed him, firing from the hip and adding to the weight of fire provided by Goldoara.
Just as he thought they might reach the spire unmolested, the Laer attacked.
Gathered together in a single system, the Laer had been one of the first species encountered by the Emperor's Children after taking their leave from the Luna Wolves and the great triumph on Ullanor. The cheers of that momentous day still rang in their ears, and the sight of so many primarchs gathered together remained a vivid, joyous memory in the minds of the Emperor's Children.
As Horus had said when he and Fulgrim had shared a heartfelt farewell, it was an end of things and a beginning of things, for Horus was now the Emperor's Regent, Warmaster of all the Imperium's armies. Now that the Emperor had returned to Terra, entire fleets, billions of warriors and the power to destroy worlds were his to command.
Warmaster…
The title was a new one, created for Horus, and its unveiling had yet to find its fit in the minds of the primarchs, who found themselves subject to the command of one who had, until then, been their equal.
The Emperor's Children had welcomed the appointment, for they counted the warriors of the Luna Wolves as their closest brothers. A terrible accident at the inception of the Emperor's Children had almost destroyed them, but Fulgrim and his Legion had risen, phoenix-like, from the disaster with greater resolve and strength. In the process Fulgrim had earned the affectionate sobriquet of ''the Phoenician''. During this time, while Fulgrim rebuilt his shattered Legion, he and his few warriors had fought alongside the Luna Wolves for almost a century.
With a stream of fresh recruits drawn from Terra and Fulgrim's home of Chemos, the Legion had grown rapidly and, under the aegis of the Warmaster, become one of the deadliest fighting forces in the galaxy.
Horus himself had praised Fulgrim's Legion as one of the best he had fought alongside.
Now, with decades of war behind them, the Emperor's Children had the numbers to embark on crusades of their own, to make their own way in the galaxy, battling alone for the first time in over a century.
The Legion was hungry to prove itself, and Fulgrim had thrown his all into making up for the time lost while he had rebuilt his Legion, seeking to push the boundaries of the Imperium yet further and prove the courage and worth of his Legion.
First contact with the Laer had come about when one of the 28th Expedition's forward scout ships had discovered evidence of civilisation in a nearby binary cluster and determined that it was a culture of some sophistication. Though initially not hostile to the Imperial forces, this alien race had reacted violently when one of the 28th Expedition's scout forces had been sent towards their home world. A small, but powerful alien war fleet had attacked the Imperial vessels as they approached the system's core world, destroying every one of them without the loss of a single vessel.
From what little information had been gathered before the scout force's destruction, the Mechanicum adepts had discovered that the aliens called themselves the Laer and that their technology was capable of matching and, in many cases, exceeding that of the Imperium.
The bulk of Laer society appeared to exist on numerous, city-sized atolls of floating coral that plied the skies of Laeran, an oceanic planet that bore all the hallmarks of a world submerged by the melting of its ice caps. Only the peaks of what had once been its tallest mountains and structures protruded from the mighty seas that covered its entire surface.
Administrators from the Council of Terra had postulated that perhaps the Laer could be made a protectorate of the Imperium, since conquering such an advanced race could prove a long and costly endeavour.
Fulgrim had rejected such a notion out of hand, famously saying, 'Only humanity is perfect and for an alien race to hold its own ideals and technology as comparable to ours is profane. No, the Laer deserve only extinction.'
And so the Cleansing of Laeran was begun.
TWO
The Phoenix Gate
The Eagle will Rule
In the Fire
Of all the ships in the 28th Expedition, the Pride of the Emperor was the most magnificent, its armoured length inlaid with gold and armoured plates the colour of rich wine. It orbited the sapphire blue world of Laeran like the regal flagship of some ancient king, surrounded by an entourage of escorts, battleships, transports, supply vessels and army mass conveyers.
The shipwrights of Jupiter had laid its keel a hundred and sixty years ago, the design and creation overseen by the Fabricator General of Mars himself, and its every component crafted by hand to unimaginably exacting specifications. The construction process had taken twice as long as any other vessel of comparable displacement, but such was only to be expected for the flagship of the Primarch of the III Legion, the Emperor's Children.
The formation of 28th Expedition was a thing of martial beauty, perfectly anchored above Laeran in a textbook pattern of patrol and compliance that ensured nothing hostile could reach or leave the planet without being intercepted by the Raptores of the Imperial fleet. The vessels of the Laer that had proven so deadly to the expedition's scout fleet were now wreckage, drifting around the rings of the system's sixth planet, destroyed by the precise use of overwhelming force and Fulgrim's mastery of naval warfare.
Though the world below was known as Laeran, its official designation was Twenty-Eight Three, being the third world the 28th Expedition had brought to compliance. Though such an appellation was somewhat premature, given the ferocity of the opening battle attesting to its non-compliance, its usage was considered appropriate since compliance was deemed a certainty.
The Andronius and Fulgrim's Virtue, liveried in the purple and gold of the Emperor's Children, stood sentinel over the primarch's flagship, each with an exemplary legacy of victory behind them. Flocks of Raptores darted back and forth as they escorted the great and the good of the 28th Expedition to the Pride of the Emperor, for with the Laer fleet eliminated, the primarch was to unveil his plans to prosecute the war.
First Captain Julius Kaesoron was a man not used to conflicting emotions, which made his current situation deeply uncomfortable. Dressed in the triumphal purple of his toga
picta and the martial red of his lacerna cloak, he cut an imposing figure as he marched swiftly to the Heliopolis, followed by his equerry, Lycaon, and a retinue of bearers who carried his helmet, sword and trailing cloak.
A pendant of fiery amber hung around his neck and nestled between the carved pectorals of his golden breastplate. Nothing of his discomfort showed on his patrician features, for to display such emotion would suggest that he doubted the course his primarch had set, and that was unthinkable.
They marched along a wide processional way with pale walls of cool marble and towering onyx columns, their surfaces inlaid with gold lettering that spoke of battles won and glories gained during the Great Crusade. The Pride of the Emperor was to be Fulgrim's legacy to the future, and its walls bore the history of the Imperium carved into its very bones.
Statues of the Legion's heroes lined the processional way and gilt framed artworks commissioned from the expedition's remembrancers brought some much needed colour to the cold space.
'Are we in a hurry?' asked Lycaon, his armour shining and polished, though much less ostentatious than that of the first captain. 'I thought the Lord Fulgrim said he would await your arrival before presenting his course to the expedition.'
'He did,' snapped Julius, though he quickened his pace, much to the consternation of his bearers, 'but if we are to do what he demands, then the sooner I am down on Twenty-Eight Three the better. A month, Lycaon! He wants Laeran compliant in a month!'
'The men are ready,' promised Lycaon. 'We can do it!'
'I don't doubt we can do it, Lycaon, but the butcher's bill will be high, perhaps too high.'
'The Stormbirds are prepped on their launch rails and we await only your word to unleash them on the Laer.'
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