The Unburdened

by David Annandale

  The loyalist trained his bolter on Kurtha Sedd. Two shells slammed into the Chaplain’s cuirass. Ceramite cracked. The blows were massive in their impact and their outrage. He swung his crozius and smashed the barrel of the bolter down. He collided with the Ultramarine. His momentum knocked the warrior back, throwing him off-balance for a second. Long enough for Kurtha Sedd to strike again with his crozius. His staff of office had found new meaning since Monarchia. The engravings had purpose. What they had lacked before was their proper shape. The aquila was a distortion, a forcing of lines into a lie. Now the head was an eight-pointed star, and it crashed down on the Ultramarine’s helm with the force of truth. Its energy field disrupted the internal gravity of the armour’s matter. The helm shattered. The black points of the star embedded themselves in the loyalist’s skull. Kurtha Sedd yanked the crozius out with a backward sweep of his arm. Bone splinters and cerebral cortex spread out in an arc. The Ultramarine toppled forwards.

  The loyalist legionaries died. The Word Bearers cut through the mortal resistance without slowing. Kurtha Sedd ran through bodies no more substantial before his wrath than phantoms. They broke and bled beneath his boots. He passed through the left doorway into a vast antechamber. At its centre, a marble staircase thirty metres wide descended into the archive’s arcology. There were further thousands of civilians here, packing tight on the stairway and on the floor leading to it. The Word Bearers burned and shot their way in, carving space for themselves through murder and fear. Screams filled the antechamber. Their echoes rose to the frieze-adorned ceiling. Heroically proportioned administrators of Calth looked down with imperturbable, quiet pride as vengeful giants in crimson massacred the people of Lanshear.

  Sor Gharax’s escort dragged him through the doorway. His snarls, amplified by the marble walls, were louder than the screams. Outside, the crowd panicked. Torn between the need to escape the coming solar event and the terror of the Word Bearers, its movements became confused. As the rest of the company entered the antechamber, Kurtha Sedd moved to the doorway to watch. He saw a populace abandon hope and become a collective manifestation of chaos.

  Then, almost simultaneously, two mechanical rumbles began. Above his head, the blast doors began their slow descent. And approaching from a nearby road, still hidden but drawing closer, came the sound of massive engines.

  Transports. Possibly tanks. The real force of Ultramarines heading for this shelter.

  THREE

  Antechamber

  Cultural memory

  Anointed

  ‘Hold fire!’ Kurtha Sedd voxed to the company. He ordered a retrieval party to haul the Ultramarines’ corpses into the archive, and he ordered the civilians spared for the moment. He gambled against the ticking seconds. He saw the opportunity and risks of the Word Bearers’ position with the perfection of revelation. The doors were coming down with the gradual, majestic certainty of glaciers. It would take them at least another minute to close. There was that long for action, and less than that to prepare the trap.

  The bodies were within metres of the doorway. It took seconds only to get them out of sight. With the killing stopped, those same seconds were all that was needed for the refugees to begin rushing inside again. The grinding descent of the doors overcame their fear of the Word Bearers. The shrinking of the entrance was the sign of the end of the world. That was the greatest terror. It spurred the populace on.

  The people were a river. Their numbers concealed the traces of the battle outside. In the archive, they flowed around the immovable stones of the Word Bearers. The company lined up on either side of the entrance, a few metres back from the doorway, invisible from the exterior. Kurtha Sedd stood on the right, at the furthest end of the ambush. From here, he had a view of the Ultramarines’ arrival.

  Three Rhinos and a Land Raider drove into the Gades Archives square. They were accompanied by two more squads on foot.

  ‘They outnumber and outgun us,’ Toc Derenoth voxed. He stood in the line opposite Kurtha Sedd.

  ‘They won’t be bringing those vehicles in with them,’ said Kaeloq.

  ‘And they’re out of time.’ Kurtha Sedd smiled.

  The doors were less than five metres from the floor.

  The loading ramps of the transports dropped open. The Ultramarines rushed for the entrance. They held their weapons at the ready against their chests, barrels pointing up. They urged the civilians forwards, but took care not to trample them. They cost themselves precious seconds.

  Four metres. The shadows in the antechamber deepened as daylight was shut out of the Gades Archives.

  The first of the Ultramarines crossed the threshold. They came two abreast. Hundreds of civilians crowded in on either side of their phalanx. The refugees were animals, lowing with panic. They were a perfect cover.

  Two more seconds. Three metres. Kurtha Sedd mentally recited the names of the Old Gods. Then he said, ‘Now.’

  There were a dozen Ultramarines in the antechamber. They towered over the civilians. They presented clear, easy targets. The Word Bearers’ enfilading fire caught them at neck level. They had no opportunity to respond. The kill-zone of the ambush was a maelstrom of shells and flame. In such close quarters, the impact blasts of the bolter rounds were so great the civilians died by the score from the splash damage alone. The Ultramarines had no chance. Even so, they fought back. Their return volley was a ferocious burst of desperate anger. They had too many targets and too little time.

  Kurtha Sedd was pleased by the enemy’s action. It was strong, and it was futile, and in its futile strength made their humiliation even more satisfying. You watched us kneel, he thought. We will see you lower yet. Already, we are burying you.

  The Ultramarines beyond the entrance began to shoot. The storm of ammunition illuminated the interior, but the bodies of civilians and stricken battle-brothers before them deprived them of a clear field of fire. The doors were now two metres from closing. They were down to seconds to fight or to race for shelter. They tried to do both.

  The Word Bearers shifted their aim towards the entrance. The Ultramarines had to duck to get inside. They were funnelling themselves into a choke point. Their numbers meant nothing now. All they were was fuel. A sacrifice. Kurtha Sedd had a reason beyond the tactical to be where he was, and the blood of the XIII Legion was his offering as he began the next stage of his journey.

  Nearest the entrance, two more Word Bearers fell. Let their blood be a further gift, Kurtha Sedd thought.

  Outside, some of the Ultramarines had returned to their tran­sports. Heavy guns began to cycle up. Their shells slammed against the blast doors, and now Kurtha Sedd laughed. The desperation of the enemy was delicious. They were attempting to destroy their own defences. If they succeeded, where would they find shelter? Or were Guilliman’s sons, who invariably chose obedience over thought, even capable of thinking past the immediate moment?

  A metre remained. The blast doors held strong against the Rhinos and the Land Raider. Ultramarines dived under the doors, bolters blazing. The came in fast, rolling to the sides to make room for their brothers. They shot the nearer ends of the Word Bearers columns ragged. Kurtha Sedd’s formations moved back. They kept their fire steady, unceasing. There was no shelter for the enemy. The Ultramarines had no defence except speed and the fading possibility of coming in faster than the Word Bearers could kill them.

  As the doors dropped, the antechamber fell into a grey twilight. The lumen globes on its periphery illuminated the ceiling frieze more than the floor below. But now a second day broke. Kurtha Sedd winced as the light from the exterior became blinding. The heat inside the Gades Archives skyrocketed.

  Veridia’s agony had reached Calth.

  Kurtha Sedd’s auto-senses struggled to compensate as the light grew brighter yet. He could see the enemy only in silhouette. The Ultramarines’ movements beyond the door became faster yet, and jagged. The pounding of the cannons ag
ainst the door ceased. One of the vehicles exploded. The blast pushed air into the antechamber with the force of a gale. Flames licked the edges of the doors. The heat of Veridia’s greater fire reached inside. The air filtered by Kurtha Sedd’s respirator grille was the breath from the heart of a furnace. It desiccated. It withered. The civilians still on the surface level of the archives began to collapse. Flesh smoked.

  A more deadly killer came with the heat. Kurtha Sedd blinked off the radiation warnings. They had become a strident shriek of pulsing red, even with the blast doors almost closed. It was time to retreat. Power armour could not protect for long against the star’s siege of Calth. The Word Bearers needed to be deeper underground, with tonnes of bedrock between them and the inferno.

  The Ultramarines made a desperate charge at the disappearing gap. A few more lunged inside. Their fight lasted a few more seconds after that. They bellowed their hatred and defiance, and they did not go down easily. But they did go down. The discipline of Fifth Company was unbreakable. Kurtha Sedd’s brothers directed their hail of shells from target to target, smashing armour apart with hundreds of bolter rounds. The Ultramarines’ determination was irrelevant. Their will counted for nothing against the mass-reactive fury that battered them against the door.

  And then, with the boom of a huge, terminal bell, the blast doors slammed shut. The searing light of Calth’s new day vanished. Its heat lingered. So did its danger.

  ‘We must descend, brothers,’ said Kurtha Sedd. Beyond the doors, in the burning death of Lanshear, he could still hear the sound of struggle. He pictured the situation of the Ultramarines. They had no choices, no time, no hope. All they could do was die struggling to achieve the impossible. He smiled, giving himself the luxury of a few seconds to savour the idea of the foe’s despair.

  Do you see it now? he wondered. Do you see the futility? Do you see the lie? Or do you cling to your illusions to the end? Do they give you comfort as you burn? I don’t think they do. You are fools, but you are not ignorant. Your world is dying with you. You can see it. You can feel it. The truth is burning the flesh from your bones.

  He was about to lead the way towards the stairs when he saw Kaeloq bending over the bodies of the Ultramarines. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

  Kaeloq jerked an arm. Blood pooled on the floor. ‘Silencing them,’ he said.

  Kurtha Sedd walked forwards, mindful of the damage he was experiencing. Kaeloq was tearing the tongues out of the dead. The legionary picked up a head that had been severed by bolter fire. He threw the helm away, reached his fingers between the jaws and ripped. He dropped the tongue onto the growing heap at his feet. ‘I’ve had enough of their lies,’ Kaeloq said.

  Kurtha Sedd laughed. Kaeloq’s act was delicious in its barbarism. It visited mutilation atop humiliation, and it was precisely the sort of excess the XIII Legion deserved. ‘And who will see this justice? We must leave this place.’

  ‘I will know it. I will carry it with me. The gods will know it.’

  Kurtha Sedd clapped Kaeloq on the pauldron. ‘Well spoken, brother.’ He looked around at the rest of the waiting company. ‘Carry a few of these bodies down with us,’ he ordered. ‘We might find a more visible use for them yet. But take their supplies first.’ He still had not received any communications from the Legion’s off-planet forces. He did not know how long they would be fighting underground. Best to start thinking like a scavenger now.

  The company stripped the Ultramarines of ammunition and grenades. Dragging a handful of corpses with them, and still burdened with Sor Gharax, howling with impotence inside his giant coffin, the Word Bearers made for the stairs. The steps descended for hundreds of metres, directions switching back and forth at each landing. The only civilians Kurtha Sedd saw now were dead. The last to have begun the long journey down had been overcome by the limited touch of the solar storm.

  After an hour, the radiation levels and the heat dropping, the stairs ended at a long, vaulted corridor. The lumen globes illuminated more art celebrating the virtues and the heroic contributions of the administrative arms of Calth. The corridor travelled another hundred metres before it reached closed iron doors. They were not sealed. Kurtha Sedd battered them open with a single blow from both fists. They swung wide with a clang.

  On the other side of the doorway was the principal underground repository of the Gades Archives. The hall was huge, twice the size of the antechamber. It was terraced, its levels laid out in concentric rings radiating out and up from the two floor entrances. The other exit was directly across from Kurtha Sedd. Its doors were open, and through it were branching tunnels.

  The terraces were packed with refugees. There were tens of thousands of mortals in the hall. It seemed they had made it this far underground, to a space that must have been familiar to at least some of them, and then stopped. They were waiting for leadership. The cataclysm that had struck Calth was too huge for them to process. They could not be trusted to find their own salvation. They clustered around the huge document vaults. Each was the size of a Rhino, and was a monumental block of iron. Each side of the vaults was covered by rows of drawers, and the vaults themselves doubled as plinths. Straddling pairs of vaults were colossal statues of Guilliman. His image was repeated dozens of times. Guilliman with arms folded, looking upon his realm with stolid satisfaction. Guilliman pointing the way forward. Guilliman in a fighting stance. The variations of the basic poses were so minimal that when Kurtha Sedd swept his eyes around the space, he had the impression of movement. The painted dome portrayed Guilliman yet again, illuminated by the orb of Veridia.

  Crouching at the base of the vaults or clutching at the stone boots of Guilliman, the people looked at the Word Bearers with a terrified curiosity. Having made it this far to safety, they were grasping at the belief that the worst was over.

  ‘No one leaves,’ Kurtha Sedd commanded.

  Vor Raennag strode to the other exit. A single legionary was all that was needed to forbid egress to the unarmed mortals.

  The Word Bearers stood around the periphery of the great hall’s floor. The civilians looked down at them with bovine anxiety. Kurtha Sedd felt contempt for their immobility. And anger. Though there was nothing they could do to save themselves, they did not even try. They stood and crouched and trembled and waited. They were terrified, yet in their helpless passivity he thought he detected hope. There was no worship of the Emperor on Calth. But there might as well have been. These people hoped for rescue when none could come, such was their trust in Guilliman and his father. Kurtha Sedd saw in them the same weakness that had first moved him to slaughter on Khur. It was faith by any other name. There was room for faith in the galaxy, but not of this kind. Kurtha Sedd had no intention of teaching these vermin the truth. But he would show them the consequences of their error.

  Then there were the vaults. The Gades Archives were a very different institution from the Holophusikon. They were not repositories of art. Nor were they one of the great libraries of Calth. But they were still an important component of its cultural memory. The character of the planet and of its society was shaped by the processes and decisions that were recorded here. This was why he had chosen to make for the Archives. He had guessed Fifth Company would find large numbers of undefended civilians. Just as important was the memory he was about to destroy. He was going to annihilate a portion of Calth’s identity.

  ‘Burn everything,’ he said. ‘Nothing survives. Choke this hall with blood and ash. And mark it. Claim it.’

  He fired once with his plasma pistol at the right leg of the nearest statue. The shot melted the top of the vault, igniting its contents. Refugees died, and the burned survivors at the edge of the blast howled. Their screams spread through the chamber like a plague. The figure of Guilliman toppled sideways and crashed against another statue, smashing it down too, then fell and crushed a score of mortals beneath its stone bulk. The other Word Bearers followed his example and loose
d a single round each. The barrage was enough to butcher over a hundred of the nearest civilians. The panic began. People stampeded up the terraces of the hall, trampling each other as they raced for egress that did not exist. The Word Bearers followed with blade and ceramite fist.

  There was no hurry. No need to expend ammunition grown precious. The citizens of Lanshear had no defence, no recourse, no hope. They killed many of their own as they fled to nowhere. Kurtha Sedd led the slaughter in perfect silence. The victims had no right to a truth they would not accept. Perhaps they sensed it as their calls for help went unanswered and their blood flowed over the terraces and the air filled with burning fragments of scrolls. Kurtha Sedd did not care. What mattered was that they died. They were a burnt offering. The destruction of the vaults was a strike against the Ultramarines. The killing of the people was a gift to the gods of Chaos. They were a gesture of thanks and a prayer for guidance.

  Kurtha Sedd climbed upwards, striking with his crozius left and right. He moved his arm with the steady regularity of a metronome. He walked slowly, crushing limbs and heads beneath his tread. Every gesture was an act of violence. He performed the killing with all the care ritual demanded. The arc of the crozius resembled a bene­diction. Forty-four years ago, it would have been. Now, instead of blessing the worshippers of the God-Emperor, the same motion destroyed the unthinking servants of the false idol. His armour was coated in vitae. Bits of flesh and bone clung to its surface. He was anointed with murder, and so were his brothers.

  The slaughter took less than ten minutes. At the end of that period, no mortals drew breath. Flames burned across the length of every terrace. The vaults were gutted. The archive had become a huge bonfire. Black smoke rose to the dome, obscuring the painting. Veridia and the primarch were eclipsed. Kurtha Sedd approved of the symbolism. And on the walls were more symbols: the runes of the gods of Chaos daubed in blood. The people had died for a lie, and in their deaths had been turned into the words of truth.