by Ben Counter
The plasma engines roared, loud and throaty, scorching a blue swathe of fire and heat across the surface of Thule. A new star was rising in the darkling sky, so terrible and wonderful that it defied expression. It was a thunderous metal god given form, and it would light the galaxy aflame with its wrath.
At last the Furious Abyss was underway. As Kelbor-Hal watched it lift majestically into the firmament and registered the heavy thrum of its engines, a single tiny vestige of emotion blinked into existence within him. It was an ephemeral thing, barely quantifiable. Accessing internal cogitators, interfacing with his personal memory engrams, the fabricator general found its expression.
It was awe.
THE DRONE SHIP waited deep within the heart of Thule, accessed through a series of clandestine tunnels and lesser-known chambers. As it made its approach, the still toiling menials and servitors paid it no notice, programme wafers ensuring that they remained intent on their work. So, the shuttle passed them by slowly, unchallenged, unseen. Once through the myriad tunnels, the drone waited for several hours docked in a small antechamber that fed off the vast gravity engine at the asteroid’s core.
An hour earlier, Fabricator General Kelbor-Hal’s personal barge had departed the station, the head of the Mechanicum leaving his subordinate, Magos Epsolon, to organise the clean up after the launch of the Furious Abyss. It was to be the last vessel that left Thule.
Pre-programmed activation protocols abruptly came on line in the servitor pilot slaved to the drone shuttle. A mix of chemicals, separated within the body of the servitor pilot became merged as they were fed into a shared chamber. Once combined, the harmless chemicals became a volatile solution capable of incredible destructive force. A second after the solution became fully merged a small incendiary charge ignited their fury. The immediate firestorm engulfed the ship and spread out, the growing conflagration billowing down tunnels and through access pipes, incinerating labouring menials. When it struck the gravity engine the resultant explosions began a cataclysmic chain reaction. It took only minutes for the asteroid to break into flame-wreathed fragments. There was no time to flee to safety and no survivors. Every adept, servitor and menial was burned to ash.
The debris field would spread far and wide, but the asteroid was far enough away, locked at the farthest point of its horseshoe orbit, not to trouble Jupiter. It would not escape notice, but it was also of such little consequence that any investigation would take months to effect and ratify. None would discover the thing that had been wrought upon the asteroid’s surface until it was much, much too late.
Much technology was lost in Thule’s destruction. It was a steep price to pay for absolute and certain secrecy. In the end, the fabricator general’s will had been done. He had willed the death of Thule.
TWO
Hektor’s fate
Brothers of Ultramar
In the lair of the wolf
IT WAS DARK in the reclusium. Brother-Captain Hektor kept his breathing measured as he prosecuted another thrust with his short-blade. He followed with a smash from his combat shield and then twisted his body out of the committed attack to make a feint. Crouching low, blackness surrounding him in the chapel-like antechamber, he spun on his heel and repeated the manoeuvre in the opposite direction: swipe, thrust, block, thrust; smash, feint, turn and repeat, over and over like a physical mantra. With each successive pass he added a flourish: a riposte here, a leaping thrust there. The cycles increased in pace and intensity, the darkness enveloping him, honing his focus, building to an apex of speed and complexity, at which point Hektor would gradually slow until at peace once more.
Standing stock-still, maintaining control of his breathing, Hektor came to the end of the training regimen.
‘Light,’ he commanded, and a pair of ornate lamps flared into life on either wall, illuminating a spartan chamber.
Dressed in only sandals and a loincloth, Hektor’s body was cast in a sheen of sweat that glistened in the artificial lamplight. The curves of his enhanced musculature were accentuated within its glow. Indulging in a moment of introspection, Hektor regarded the span of his hands. They were large and strong, and bereft of any scars. He made a fist with the right.
‘I am the Emperor’s sword,’ he whispered and then clenched his left. ‘Through me is his will enacted.’
Two robed acolytes waited patiently in the shadows, cowls concealing their augmetics and other obvious deformities. Even without being compared to the tall slab of muscle that was an Astartes, they were bent-backed and diminutive.
Hektor ignored their obsequiousness as he released the straps affixing the combat shield to his arm and handed it over along with his short-blade to the acolytes. He looked at the ground as his attendants retreated silently into the shadow’s penumbra at the edge of the room. An engraved ‘U’ was carved into the centre of the chamber, chased in silver on a circular field of blue. Hektor stood in the middle of it, in exactly the position that he had started.
He allowed himself a smile as he beckoned his attendants to bring forth his armour.
A great day was fast approaching.
It had been a long time since he had seen his fellow Ultramarines. He and five hundred of his battle-brothers had been far from their native Ultramar for three years, as they helped prosecute the Emperor’s Great Crusade to bring enlightenment to the galaxy and repatriate the lost colonies of man by fighting the Vektates of Arkenath. The Vektate were a deviant culture, an alien overmind that had enslaved the human populous of Arkenath. Hektor and his warrior brothers had shattered the yoke that bound their unfortunate human kin and in so doing had destroyed the Vektates. The human populace owed fealty to the Imperium, and demonstrated it gladly when they were free of tyranny. It had been a grim war. The Fist had been involved in a brutal ship-to-ship action against the enemy, but had prevailed. Repairs had been conducted on Arkenath, as well as the requisitioning of a small tithe of men, eager to venture beyond the stars, to help replenish elements of the ship’s crew. Once the war was over, Hektor and his battle-brothers had been summoned to the Calth system and the region of space known as Ultramar. At long last, they would be reunited with their brothers and their primarch.
Hektor was full of pride at the thought of seeing Roboute Guilliman again, his gene-father and noble leader of the Ultramarines Legion. The deciphered messages from the Fist of Macragge’s astropaths had been clear. The Warmaster himself, mighty Horus, had ordered the Legion to the Veridan system. Guilliman had ratified the Warmaster’s edict and instructed all disparate Ultramarine forces to muster at Calth. There they would take on supplies and rendezvous with their brothers in preparation to launch a strike on an ork invasion force besieging the worlds of neighbouring Veridan. A short detour to the Vangelis space port to take on some more battle-brothers stationed there and the campaign to liberate Veridan would be underway.
FULLY ARMOURED, HEKTOR strode down an access tunnel and headed towards the bridge. His ship, the Fist of Macragge, was a Lunar-class battleship, named in honour of the Ultramarines’ home world. Deck hands, comms-officers and other Legion serfs bustled past the Astartes down the cramped confines of one of the vessel’s main thoroughfares.
The faint hiss of escaping pressure greeted Hektor’s arrival on the bridge as the automated portal allowed him entry, before sliding shut in his wake.
‘Captain on the bridge,’ bellowed Ivan Cervantes, the ship’s helmsmaster. Cervantes was a human, and despite being dwarfed by the mighty Astartes, he remained straight-backed and proud before the glorious countenance of his captain. Cervantes snapped a sharp salute with an augmetic hand; his original body part had been lost on Arkenath, together with his left eye, during the boarding action against the Vektates. The bionic replacement glowed dull red in the half-light of the bridge.
Screen illumination from various consoles threw stark slashes into the gloom, the activation icons upon them grainy and emerald. Crewmen, hard-wired directly into the vessel’s controls from access ports bolted i
nto their shaved scalps worked with silent diligence. Others stood, consulting data-slates, observing sensor readings and otherwise maintaining the Fist of Macragge’s smooth and uninterrupted passage through real space. Lobotomised servitors performed and monitored the ship’s mundane functions with precise, circadian rhythm.
‘As you were, helmsmaster,’ Hektor replied, climbing a short flight of steps that led to a raised dais at the forefront of the bridge, and sitting down at a large command throne at its centre.
‘How far are we from Vangelis space port?’ Hektor asked.
‘We expect to arrive in approximately—’
Warning icons flashed large and insistent on the forward viewport in front of the command throne, interrupting the helmsmaster in mid-flow.
‘What is it?’ Hektor demanded, his tone calm and level.
Cervantes hastily consulted a console beside him. ‘Proximity warning,’ he explained quickly, still poring over the data that had started churning from the console.
Hektor leaned forward in his command throne, his tone urgent.
‘Proximity warning? From what? We are alone in real space.’
‘I know, sire. It just… appeared.’ Cervantes was frantically consulting more data as the organised routine of the bridge was thrust into immediate and urgent action.
‘It’s another ship,’ said the helmsmaster. ‘It’s huge. I’ve never seen such a vessel!’
‘Impossible,’ barked Hektor. ‘What of the sensorium, and the astropaths? How could it have got so close to us, so quickly?’ he demanded.
‘I don’t know, sire. There was no warning,’ said Cervantes.
‘Bring it up on the viewscreen,’ Hektor ordered.
Blast shields retracted smoothly from the front viewscreen, revealing a swathe of real space beyond. There, like black on night, was the largest ship Hektor had ever seen. It was shaped like a long blade with three massive decks that speared out from the hull like prongs on a trident.
Points of intense red light flared in unison down the vessel’s port side as it turned to show the Fist of Macragge its broadside. The light illuminated more of the ship, so that it stretched the entire length of the viewscreen. It was even larger than Hektor had first assumed. Even several kilometres from the Fist of Macragge, it was rendered massive in the glow of its laser batteries
‘Name of Terra,’ Hektor gasped when he realised what was happening.
The terrible vessel that had somehow foiled all of their sensors, even their astropathic warning systems, was firing.
‘Raise forward arc shields!’ Hektor cried, as the first impact wave struck the bridge. A bank of consoles on the left suddenly exploded outward, shredding a servitor with shrapnel and all but immolating one of the deck crew. The bridge shuddered violently. Crewmen clutched their consoles to stay upright. Servitor drones went immediately into action dousing sporadic fires with foam. Hektor gripped the arms of his command throne as critical warning klaxons howled in the tight space, and crimson lightning shone like blood as emergency power immediately kicked in.
‘Forward shields,’ Hektor cried again as a secondary impart wave threw the Astartes from his command throne.
‘Helmsmaster Cervantes, at once!’ Hektor urged, getting to his feet.
No answer came. Ivan Cervantes was dead, the left side of his body horribly burned by one of the many fires erupting all across the bridge.
What was left of the crew worked frantically to reroute power, close off compromised sections and find firing solutions so that they might at least retaliate.
‘Somebody get me power, lances, anything!’ Hektor roared.
It was utter chaos as the carefully drilled battle routines were made a mockery of by the sudden and unexpected attack.
‘We have sustained critical damage, sire,’ explained one of Cervantes’s subordinates, blood running freely down the side of his face. Behind him, Hektor saw other crewmen writhing in agony. Some were prone on the bridge floor and not moving at all. ‘We’re dead in the void.’
Hektor’s face was grim in the gory glow of the bridge, a burst of sparks from a shorting console casting his features in stark relief.
‘Get me an astropath.’
‘A distress call, sire?’ asked the crewman, fighting to be heard above the chaotic din. The silhouettes of his colleagues rushed back and forth to stem the damage, desperately trying to restore order in spite of the fact that it was hopeless.
‘We are beyond help,’ Hektor uttered with finality as the Fist of Macragge’s systems started failing. ‘Send a warning.’
CESTUS KNELT IN silent reflection within one of the sanctums in the Omega quarter of Vangelis space port. The vast orbital station was built into a large moon and based around several hexagonal blisters into which docks, communion temples and muster halls were housed. A labyrinthine tramway connected each and every location of Vangelis, which was organised into a series of courtyards or quarters to make navigation rudimentary.
The bustling space port was crammed with traders, naval crewmen and mechwrights. A large proportion of its area had been given over to the Astartes. Vangelis was a galactic waymarker and small numbers of Astartes involved in more discreet missions used it as a gathering point.
Once their objective was completed, they would congregate at one of the many muster halls designated for their Legion and await pick-up by their battleships. Though little more than a company from any given Legion would be expecting transit at any one time, sectors Kappa through Theta were at the complete disposal of the Legions. Few non-Astartes were ever seen there, barring ubiquitous Legion serfs and attendants, though occasionally remembrancers would be granted brief access in concordance with maintaining good relations with the human populous.
Cestus drank in the darkness of the sanctum and used it to clear his thoughts. He was fully armoured, and pressed his left gauntlet against the sweeping, silver ‘U’ emblazoned on the cuirass of his power armour, symbol of the great Ultramarines Legion, whilst keeping his head bowed.
Soon, he thought.
He and nine of his battle-brothers had been on Vangelis for over a month. They had been acting as honour guard for an Imperial dignitary at nearby Ithilrium and were consequently separated from the rest of their Legion. Their sabbatical had passed slowly for Cestus. At first, he had thought it curious and enlightening to mix with the human population of the space port, but even bereft of his power armour and swathed in Legionary robes he was greeted with awe and fear. Unlike some of his brothers, it wasn’t a reaction that he relished. Cestus had kept to Astartes quarters after that.
The fact that transit was inbound to extract them from Vangelis and ferry him and his brothers to Ultramar and their primarch and Legion filled Cestus with relief. He longed to embark on the Great Crusade again, to be out on the battlefields of a heathen galaxy, bringing order and solidity.
Word had reached them that the Warmaster Horus had already departed for the planet of Isstvan III to quell a rebellion against the Imperium. Cestus was envious of his Legion brothers, the World Eaters, Death Guard and Emperor’s Children who were en route with the Warmaster.
Though Cestus craved the esoteric and was fascinated by culture and erudite learning, he was a warrior. It had been bred into him. To deny it was to deny the very genetic construct of his being. He could no more do that than he could go against the will and patriarchal wisdom of the Emperor. Such a thing could not be countenanced. So, Cestus sought the seclusion of the meditative sanctum.
‘You have no need to genuflect on my account, brother.’ A deep voice came from behind Cestus, who was on his feet and facing the intruder in one swift motion.
‘Antiges,’ said Cestus, sheathing his short-blade at his hip. Normally, Cestus would have rebuked his battle-brother for such a disrespectful remark, but he had formed an especially strong bond with Antiges, one that transcended rank, even of the Ultramarines.
It was a bond that had served the battle-brothers well, their whole much
more than the sum of their parts as it was for the Legion in its entirety. Where Cestus was governed by emotion but prone to caution, Antiges was at times choleric and insistent, and less intense than his brother-captain. Together, they provided one another with balance.
Battle-Brother Antiges was similarly attired to his fellow Astartes. The sweeping bulk and curve of his blue power armour reflected that of Cestus, together with the statutory icons of the Ultramarines. Pauldrons, vambrace and gorget were all trimmed with gold, and a gilt brocade hung from Antiges’s left shoulder pad to the right breast of his armour’s corselet. Neither Astartes wore a helmet; Antiges’s fastened to a clasp at his belt, whilst Cestus’s head was framed by a silver laurel over his blond hair, his battle helm cradled beneath his arm.
‘A little on edge, brother-captain?’ Antiges’s slate-grey eyes, the mirror of his closely cropped skull, flashed. ‘Do you desire to be out amongst the stars, commanding part of the fleet again?’
As well as a company captain, Cestus also bore the rank of fleet commander. During his sojourn on Ithilrium that aspect of his duty had been briefly suspended. Antiges was right, he did desire to be back with the fleet, fighting the enemies of the Emperor.
‘At the prospect of you lurking in the shadows, waiting to reveal yourself,’ Cestus returned sternly and stepped forward.
He managed to maintain the chastening expression for only a moment before he smiled broadly and clapped Antiges on the shoulder.
‘Well met, brother,’ Cestus said, clasping Antiges’s forearm firmly.
‘Well met,’ Antiges replied, returning the greeting. ‘I have come to take you away from here, brother-captain,’ he added. ‘We are mustering for the arrival of the Fist of Macragge.’
IT WAS A short journey from the sanctum of Communion Temple Omega to the dock where the rest of Cestus’s and Antiges’s battle-brothers awaited them. A narrow promenade, lined with ferns and intricate statuettes, quickly gave way to a wide plaza with multiple exits. The Ultramarines, who spoke with warm camaraderie, took the western fork that would eventually lead them to the dock.