by Guy Haley
Mesring was taken aback at Koorland’s feigned ignorance, but rallied well. ‘A grandiose title for a humble role. I am fortunate to interpret the Emperor’s will.’ He bowed stiffly from the waist, his chins wobbling with the effort. ‘And it is glorious to stand before His favoured servants, His holy sons.’ His pale flesh gleamed, and he slurred his words despite his manners. Koorland suspected he was drunk.
‘Your garb tells another story than humility,’ said Thane. ‘You tell me the Emperor is pleased? Who are you to know?’
‘You gainsay the will of the Holy Emperor?’ said Mesring.
‘Your religion means nothing to me,’ said Thane. ‘My Chapter follows the tenets of the Imperial Truth, set down by the Emperor during the Great Crusade. How quickly you have forgotten it. We are not holy. Do not treat us as such.’
‘One thousand five hundred years is a long time, Chapter Master,’ said Mesring. ‘The Imperial Truth is all but forgotten. The scriptures tell us that the Emperor conceived of it as a necessary lie. The very name is an exercise in irony. Only in death has the Emperor cast off His corporeal cloak and revealed Himself to us in His true glory!’
‘I disagree,’ said Thane. ‘Your cult profanes His memory with idolatry.’
‘When will the Adeptus Astartes see the light?’ said Mesring. ‘It troubles me, my son, that the Emperor’s own angels deny the truth.’
‘We are not angels!’ snorted Thane.
‘You were among those who urged the populace to take the oath of crusade?’ said Koorland.
‘I did, I did! As was only right.’
‘It proved to be wholly wrong,’ said Koorland. ‘A rash move that risked provoking the orks, and cost the lives of millions, while you and Tull and the others who promoted it remain alive and well.’
A flicker of consternation crossed Mesring’s face. ‘Then it is good that you are here now, to fight them on our behalf.’
‘Aye, that is what we are, priest – warriors,’ said Thane.
‘One day, I hope to bring all our mighty warriors into the truth of the faith. Some are perhaps more amenable than others.’ His gaze strayed around the room, looking for someone. He smiled secretly to himself.
‘Then go and speak to them,’ said Thane. He glared menacingly at Mesring until the Ecclesiarch made his excuses and left.
A surge of anger built in Koorland’s chest. The men and women around him had been scheming while Terra burned. The temptation to sweep it all aside was great.
‘I am done here,’ he told Thane. ‘I return to the fleet. The Senatorum is broken, all the High Lords invested only in their own advancement. I have heard the name of the Emperor invoked by every charlatan in this house. This cannot be allowed to continue.’
With that he departed the room, the crowd parting hurriedly before him.
Seventeen
War in the dust
Magneric stamped over the gritty ruin of Dzelenic IV, assault cannon blazing. Orks filled the surface from horizon to horizon. More came thundering down from orbit in rickety landing craft, little more than balls of scrap that bounced to a halt on the ground before bursting into pieces. Sometimes they fell apart to reveal their mangled occupants, but more often than not mobs of howling greenskins came running out, shooting their weapons into the air. Magneric ploughed through them unconcerned, killing them without thought, the eye of his Dreadnought fixed upon the low ruin the Iron Warriors had occupied, visible over the ridge of a dune. By the gunfire flashing out, Kalkator still lived.
The ammunition counters in Magneric’s display blinked to orange as his assault cannon ran to below half capacity. The view Magneric had of the outside world was grainy, bleached out, striped with the lines of inferior pict capture. Reticules danced over his view, highlighting targets of priority, data-screeds and numerical data further crowding his vision, but he saw well enough to kill.
His flesh body floated in the sarcophagus at the machine’s heart. He was dimly aware of it, the hurts that it still suffered, the limbs that it lacked. It did not trouble him. Others given the singular honour of internment spoke of disassociation, a feeling of distance from the world of the living and a weariness that became harder and harder to bear. Magneric did not feel this. He considered the metal behemoth he dwelled within as his own flesh and blood, an extension of his will. Magneric refused to sleep like the others, and retained his rank and his own name, for Magneric had hatred to drive him onward. Kalkator was the wellspring and the object of this fury, an emotion pure in its heat and ferocity. Magneric lived for Kalkator’s death.
‘Kalkator! Kalkator! I will come and end you!’ He caught an ork in his power fist and crushed it flat, hurling the gory remains back into its fellows and bowling them over. Those that got back up again he gunned down with a spray of fire from his storm bolter.
‘The Emperor has decreed that I slay you, traitor! I am coming for you!’
Magneric was the ebon spear point of an unstoppable blade. His warriors came in his wake, driving through the orkish attack. Behind him Chaplain Aladucos chanted hymnals in praise of the Emperor, encouraging Magneric’s warriors to greater acts of violence. The Black Templars gunships duelled with ork fighters overhead. Three lay in smoking ruin four kilometres behind their advance. Magneric’s own craft sent a column of black smoke climbing skyward, but it did not matter. Only to go forward, to slaughter the foes of the Emperor, to continue the crusade to conquer the galaxy in the name of mankind!
Death was all that mattered to Magneric.
Let Baldon wheedle at him to rest, let Ralstan admonish him for his lack of maintenance slumber. He would sleep when the stain of Kalkator’s existence was wiped from the galaxy.
‘Onwards, brothers, in the name of the Emperor! Strike down these animals and carve a path towards those who betrayed the Lord of Terra. Feel His holy wrath. Kill the ork that we might strike down the traitors! Wash the sands of this dead world with their blood, and then let us away, and conquer, conquer, conquer in the Emperor’s name!’
Magneric surged on, batting orks from his path, until the rabble thinned and gave out. The crowd was behind him. He shot down the last few orks between him and the dune, gyros shifting within his body to compensate for the slip of the sand. He came over the crest, and looked down at the Iron Warriors’ last desperate redoubt.
It had been a building of unguessable height. The top part had been sheared away in the cataclysm that had destroyed the world, leaving sprouts of tangled rebar jutting from crumbling nubs of rockcrete. Three floors alone remained, set in a slight hollow scoured out by the actions of the wind blasting around the building, the bottommost level half-buried in the sand. The ruin had few windows, and one door. Perhaps that lack of apertures was why it had stood a thousand years in the face of howling winds while others around it had been worn down to angular patterns in the sand. The sole entrance was on the side facing Magneric, choked to the top with windblown dust. He rumbled with satisfaction. The traitors’ last Thunderhawk had come down hard a quarter of a kilometre away, ploughing up shattered concrete from the barren fields of the desert. The wreck smoked still. The Iron Warriors were going nowhere.
The glint of steel in the ruddy sunlight revealed Iron Warriors manning the building. A ring of dead orks three deep surrounded it, staining the dust black with their blood. None had come within twenty metres of the position and lived. The building was angled, knocked to one side by seismic upheaval, its rockcrete scoured rough by the dead world’s unforgiving weather. Cracks spidered it on all sides. As battered as Kalkator’s Great Company, it was nevertheless a serviceable fortress, and the Iron Warriors were far from beaten.
Magneric paused, revelling in the moment before he would crush his foe. Behind him the howl of the orks quietened, and the hard clatter of weapons fire abated. His sergeants, Chaplain and castellan all voxed him reporting the same thing from all fronts: the orks were wi
thdrawing.
Laughing in triumph, Magneric stamped forward, sending crescents of sand skidding out in front of him, to stand at the edge of the killing field.
‘Kalkator!’ he boomed. ‘Kalkator! Come out, come out! You are caught! The orks retreat, and you face only me and my judgement. You are run to earth. Come out from your den and face me not as an animal, but as the noble warrior you once were. Ask for mercy, repent your sins against the Emperor and I shall absolve you of your transgressions with a swift death!’
Silence. Magneric’s vox clicked.
‘My lord,’ said Ralstan. ‘The orks have scattered, but I have reports from Ericus that there are many, many more inbound. The Obsidian Sky has been unable to engage with the Palimodes and is beset on all sides. Further ork craft are approaching. Be quick with this. We must leave!’
A noise of dissatisfaction rumbled from Magneric’s vox-emitter. ‘Kalkator! Answer me!’
This time a voice sounded from the building in reply. ‘Magneric! So high must I be in your regard, that you chase me for a thousand years and more, into the teeth of the greatest ork Waaagh! since Ullanor!’
‘Kalkator!’ boomed the Dreadnought. His pneumatics hissed, and the great block of his right shoulder shifted, lifting his assault cannon high. The barrels spun once, and halted. Magneric’s targeting array danced over the ruin, picking out the Iron Warriors in green outlines. Kalkator was not among them.
‘You are looking well. Iron without suits you.’
‘I am unmoved by your mockery,’ boomed Magneric. ‘Come out so that I might kill you!’
Other Black Templars gathered on the dune, kneeling down to take cover behind its ridge. Ralstan directed some of his warriors to fan out to the left and right to surround the building. They were respectfully silent. Kalkator and Magneric were veterans of the Heresy war. To hear them speak was to hear echoes of that awful conflict.
‘I ask for parley!’ shouted Kalkator.
‘You shall have none!’ roared Magneric. ‘I bring only the mercy of death, not a desire to speak.’
‘Then let me rephrase my offer,’ said Kalkator. ‘Three lascannons are pointed at your sarcophagus. If you refuse parley, or if you accept it and attempt to kill me, then I will have them open fire and burn whatever sorry scrap of flesh still exists within that machine.’
Silence fell. Evening was coming. The sinking sun, invisible behind its shroud of dust, pushed Magneric’s shadow out so that it fell upon Kalkator’s redoubt, grey and inflated in the scattered light.
‘Our auspexes detect a massive concentration of orks coming towards our position,’ said Kalkator. ‘Thousands. You are merely seventy-three warriors. You cannot hold them. I am quite content to sit here and watch them butcher you. But there is another way.’
‘My lord, he is correct,’ said Castellan Ralstan. ‘As Ericus informed us, orks are landing in number to the west. What are your orders?’
‘Do you hear them coming?’ goaded Kalkator.
‘My lord!’ said Ralstan.
Magneric roared. ‘Very well! Parley!’
‘Swear upon your honour you will not harm me,’ said Kalkator.
‘My acceptance of your truce is my bond! An oath is not required,’ bellowed Magneric indignantly.
‘Nevertheless, say it,’ said Kalkator.
‘You have my word,’ said Magneric proudly.
Kalkator emerged on the roof of the building, standing up from whatever hiding place he had been skulking in. ‘Then let us talk,’ he said.
For the first time in centuries, Kalkator stood facing Magneric. Caesax and his vexillary flanked the warsmith, the banner of his Great Company rippling in the cooling wind. Magneric’s Sword Brethren made a shallow arc about him, Ralstan at his side. Hatred glared out from eye-lenses set in black and iron-grey armour.
After a moment’s thought, Kalkator reached up and unsealed his helm. He lifted it from his head, and looked upon the Dreadnought with unmoderated eyes.
‘It is good to see you, Magneric.’
Magneric’s sole glass eye stared unblinkingly back. Upon his sensorium feed, reticules locked onto Kalkator’s vulnerable points glowed red and screamed that he should destroy the traitor.
‘Do not seek to play upon old affections!’ he snarled, his vox-emitters expressing his sentiment as an inhuman machine growl.
‘We found ourselves on opposite sides of the war,’ said Kalkator. ‘I do not see why that should invalidate our friendship.’
‘You turned on everything we fought for! You betrayed the Imperium, and cast your lot in with the Dark Powers of the universe. You have ruined mankind.’
Kalkator’s lip curved. ‘We did betray the Emperor, if such you can call abandoning the service of a liar who concealed the truth of reality from those who loved Him, who used our Legion carelessly. You might call it betrayal, freeing mankind from the fetters of oppression, allowing the strong to prevail, showing our kind the real meaning of a power that is accessible to all, not just those self-appointed guardians who hide their purposes behind untruths and oppression.’
‘You are the oppressors,’ said Magneric. ‘Your words are false.’
‘The sons of our lowliest slaves might one day join our Legion. And if they are imbued with our iron, then they shall stand strong, knowing fully in their hearts that they serve the most honest masters of all – themselves. It is you who is mistaken, dear Magneric. You Imperial Fists and that braggart father of yours. You are blind to the truth.’
‘I am Imperial Fist no longer,’ said Magneric, ‘but a Black Templar, and I am party to a greater truth. The powers of Old Night have deceived and corrupted you.’
‘And what new truth is this, I wonder?’ said Kalkator, gesturing at the relics hanging from the Dreadnought, and the texts painted upon his armour.
‘Devotion to the only one who might save us all from the hell of the warp. It was always thus.’
‘I say you are wrong,’ said Kalkator. ‘You say I am wrong. We could stand here all day and argue who is right and who is not while the orks come over that dune and hack us into pieces. Let us agree that both of us wish mankind to survive, only that we differ in the method.’
‘You are self-serving. Evil. The Emperor offers genuine salvation to the human race.’
‘Be that as it may, I do not think the orks are going to listen to your sermonising as long as I have.’
‘I will not fight alongside you again, Kalkator.’
‘Are you ashamed, Magneric?’ said Kalkator. ‘Is that why you pursue me so recklessly? I remember a time when our comradeship was lauded as an example of how our Legions could set aside their differences and find brotherhood.’
‘A trust and bond you betrayed.’
‘I could say the same of you. We fought together, Magneric. We must do so again. The alternatives are poor. We can kill each other now, or let the orks slay us one after the other. Together, we have a chance. Together, we might leave this world.’
‘A few hours ago, you might have made your escape. But the orks fill the skies. You lack sufficient flight support to break free,’ gloated Magneric. ‘Your gunships would never make it to the surface to extract you.’
‘Air cover would be part of the price of our cooperation,’ said Kalkator. ‘We fight together, we leave together. You allow us to depart the system, and then if you really must you can continue this wasteful pursuit for another thousand years.’
Ralstan voxed the Dreadnought privately. ‘As much as I hate to say this, my lord, the warsmith does have a point. Together our numbers are doubled. Nearly one hundred and fifty Space Marines against the orks, we will prevail.’
‘They no longer have the right to name themselves Legiones Astartes!’ roared Magneric for all to hear. He stamped from one foot to the other. ‘They are traitors, nothing more!’
‘We are
Space Marines, Magneric,’ said Kalkator. ‘Deny it all you will, but the same gifts your warriors possess are ours too. We must fight together, or we will all perish.’
‘Never!’
‘Think how much more good you will be able to do if you survive to continue your foolish crusades. How many xenos will live if you die, how many human worlds will call out for protection from the predation of mankind’s foes and you will not be there to answer? Neither of us want mankind to fall. Today we have a common enemy. Communicate your agreement with the Obsidian Sky, and I shall command the Palimodes to fight alongside your ship. If they do not stand united, your craft will never make it to the surface either. Do not be a fool, Magneric. Remember our battles, and how often I was right then. I am right now.’
A long moment passed. No words were forthcoming. The two lines of Space Marines faced each other silently.
Kalkator shook his head, and replaced his helm. ‘You are making a grave mistake. I will return to my warriors, and we shall–’
‘Wait!’ said Magneric, his voice low and distorted, the aged vox-equipment popping. ‘I reluctantly agree. We will fight side by side, one more time. Hear me, warriors of the Black Templars!’ He rotated from side to side, addressing all his followers. ‘No member of our Chapter is to harm the Iron Warriors until our treaty is sundered. So swear I, Magneric, Marshal of the Kalkator Crusade. Ralstan, command Ericus to aid the Iron Warriors ship. Have him provide me an estimated extraction time.’ Magneric bent down, his sarcophagus slit glowing in the failing light. ‘We will leave this world together, Kalkator, or not at all. Do not think to betray me.’
‘You have my word that I will abide by the terms of our agreement,’ said Kalkator, ‘more for the sake of our old friendship than for anything else. Now come! Bring your warriors into the redoubt. We must make our preparations.’
Eighteen
Red Haven minus one, plus one
Water, so rare a commodity on arid Mars, ran wastefully from a loose pipe connector. Orange slime furred the join, a mix of rust and biological contamination that hung half a metre down the wall. The water ran down this trailing, slimy beard, dripping silently into a slick puddle more algae than moisture. This patch of errant water was the only distinguishing feature of the pressure-release chamber Yendl waited in. Rust streaked the walls. A dead servo-skull, perhaps the drone that was supposed to report on damage like the leak, lay dusty in the corner. No sign of water flooding was apparent; evidently no pressure release had been needed in this part of the system for a long time. It was unremarkable, overlooked. The ideal place for the cadre to meet.