‘I am… a Dreadnought,’ said Cassian, feeling a chill as the realisation sank in. He was organs, now. Biological component parts: a brain, hearts, lungs, veins, arteries and vulnerable innards – bound within an amniotic weave and entombed within the armoured sarcophagus of a Redemptor.
Part of him felt pride, and a thankfulness that he was not dead. The other part tried to vocalise its claustrophobic horror, but with an effort, he strangled that voice into silence. Some warriors went mad upon internment within a Dreadnought body. He would not shame himself by joining their number.
‘You are a Dreadnought,’ said Adrastean.
‘How? My men? Were we victorious?’
‘Thanks in no small part to the heroic sacrifices made by yourself and
Brother-Librarian Keritraeus, you were,’ replied Adrastean. ‘As I understand it, when you slew the enemy leader it caused no small degree of havoc amongst the Death Guard. Many of their high-ranking lieutenants must already have been dead. Their command structure was in tatters. In the confusion, Chaplain Dematris was able not only to pull the strike force back within the safety of the walls, but to lead a swift offensive that drove the foe from your vicinity and allowed for recovery of both your and Keritraeus’
bodies.’
Cassian took a moment to process this, feeling his senses gradually synching with those of his unfamiliar metal body. He realised that he could look through multiple optic actuators at once. As he did so, he noticed that his new body was, for the moment, limbless and suspended in an intricate web of wires and armatures.
‘How did we get here?’ he asked. ‘Where is here? Did we make it back to the Indomitus Crusade fleet?’
‘In fact,’ said Adrastean, ‘the crusade fleet made it to you. We received your astropathic message and sent a substantial force to effect your safe extraction.’
‘There was a plague. Within the walls. Everyone was dead.’
‘Not the astropathic choir. When the Death Guard first attacked, the choirmaster withdrew them within a psy-baffled refuge chamber. They and a few senior members of the fortress’ personnel quarantined themselves inside.
Dematris found them, exhausted and close to starvation, within the fortress’
inner sanctum. He had them send a message, and keep sending it until half their number had died from warp trauma or physical exhaustion. But against the odds, they broke through the storms and made contact. Our ships arrived above Kalides five days later.’
‘Five days?’ asked Cassian. ‘The strike force held out that long?’
‘They did,’ said Adrastean proudly. ‘With Dematris’ leadership and the fortress walls to shield them, they dug in and resisted the Death Guard’s every effort to break through. Without their leader to drive them onwards, and with whatever ritual they intended in tatters, the enemy seemed to lose heart. Of course, the Primarch’s Sword punished them with heavy bombardments whenever its auspex were able to divine their locations. And once we had multiple ships in orbit, and fresh waves of Space Marines deploying to the surface…’
‘The Death Guard were defeated,’ finished Cassian with relish.
‘They were annihilated.’
‘What of Kalides Prime?’
‘Declared purgatus extremis. There was little enough to save. We bombed the astropathic fortress into rubble, destroyed any remaining viable military assets and laced the lower atmosphere with enough servitor-mines to ensure that, should the Death Guard return for their warriors, they will receive a deeply unpleasant welcome.’
Cassian was quiet for a moment, feeling the tick and whirr of systems within his strange new body.
‘Captain,’ he said eventually, ‘I wish to serve penance.’
‘Penance?’ asked Adrastean.
‘I lost over half of the warriors under my charge. I let Keritraeus die, and was very nearly slain myself. I cost the lives of every Cadian on Kalides, and barely succeeded in extracting any of my strike force at all. I failed in my duty, and deserve penance.’
Before Adrastean could reply, the doors to the apothecarion whispered open and a towering figure ducked through. Cassian’s hearts thumped faster as he recognised the magnificent figure of the primarch – Roboute Guilliman, here in person.
Around Cassian, the other Ultramarines dropped to one knee. He felt his shame and frustration grow as he instinctively tried – and failed – to do the same.
‘Brother Cassian,’ said Guilliman, fixing him with an unreadable expression.
‘My lord,’ said Cassian, ‘I am not worthy to be in your presence.’
‘You are not just worthy, my son – you are a hero. I will hear no more talk of failure.’
‘I…’ Cassian was lost for words.
‘You were thrown wildly off course by catastrophic warp storms,’ continued Guilliman. ‘Having already completed the mission that I sent you to accomplish, you not only held your force together through that dire experience, but you then successfully identified a means by which you could get word to us of your plight. You engaged a force of Heretic Astartes several times the size of your own, whose plan would, I suspect, have caused devastation and misery across multiple systems. I am reliably informed that
you showed nothing short of an absolute dedication to the completion of your mission, shrugged off a crushing defeat and alien interference, and even gave your own life to ensure the downfall of the foe. To me, Brother Cassian, those are the actions not of a failure, but of a hero.’
Cassian’s mind reeled, and fierce pride burned within him as he felt the sincerity of his primarch’s words.
‘Thank you, my lord,’ he managed, as around him the other Ultramarines officers stood and offered him a warrior’s salute.
‘You will be properly honoured for your valour,’ said Guilliman. ‘The commensurate accolades will be graven upon your sarcophagus by the artificers before we next go into battle.’
Cassian tried to nod, and realised he couldn’t. ‘Thank you, my lord.’
‘Thank me by learning to wield that mighty new body of yours in battle, Cassian,’ said the primarch with a smile. ‘We are only three days out from the Tarchoria Front. Do you think you will be battle-ready in that time?’
‘Give me my limbs, my weapons,’ said Cassian fiercely, ‘and I will train every moment until we make planetfall, my lord.’
‘Good,’ said Guilliman, smile broadening. ‘Are you ready to keep fighting, Dreadnought-Brother Cassian?’
‘I am, my lord,’ said Cassian, feeling a surge of purpose like a flame within him. ‘The crusade must continue!’
‘And so it shall, until the last heretic lies dead and my father’s realm is restored at last to glory.’
‘For Ultramar!’ cried the Space Marines, and Cassian shouted with them.
‘For humanity,’ said Guilliman. ‘Before it is too late.’
DARK IMPERIUM
by Guy Haley
The galaxy has changed. Darkness spreads, warp storms split reality
and Chaos is everywhere – even Ultramar. As Roboute Guilliman’s
Indomitus Crusade draws to a close, he must brave the perils of the
warp to reach his home and save it from the depredations of the
Plague God.
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THE LOST KING
ROBBIE MACNIVEN
The World Wolf’s Lair, Svellgard
Logan Grimnar – the Fangfather, the Old Wolf, the High King of Fenris –
was dead.
So the daemons said. They howled and shrieked and gibbered the news from warp-spawned throats that shouldn’t have been capable of intelligible words.
But the servants of the Dark Gods had never concerned themselves with nature’s constraints.
Logan Grimnar is dead!
‘They lie,’ Sven growled. The young Wolf Lord was clutching his doubled-
headed battleaxe, Frostclaw, with such intensity that his whole armoured body was sha
king. ‘They lie.’
‘They are warp-scum,’ Olaf Blackstone said. ‘Lying is the sole reason for their existence.’ The white-pelted Bloodguard stood behind and slightly to the right of his lord, yellow eyes surveying the bleak hills that lay barely a mile across the icy sea. Those hills now undulated with a living carpet of daemons, like an infestation of lice swarming over a rotting skull. They had appeared not half an hour before, crawling like primordial nightmares from the depths of Svellgard’s oceans. They were massing for an attack, cohorts of lesser daemons marshalling beneath the nightmarish banners of their gods, and as they did so their deranged shrieks carried across the cold waters to Sven and the rest of his Firehowler Space Wolves.
‘They’re trying to provoke us,’ Olaf said. ‘Hoping we divide our forces.’
Sven Bloodhowl opened his mouth to reply, then paused as the hammering
of bolter fire broke out behind him. His Great Company were still purging the last of the defences at the heart of the World Wolf’s Lair, burning the
shrieking daemons from their holes with gouts of blazing promethium before mowing them down with mass-reactive rounds.
Progress reports trickled back constantly over the vox as the noose tightened around the last wyrdspawn left in the depths of the fortified missile control nexus. Nine packs, the entirety of Sven’s Great Company, were stalking the bunkers, redoubts and weapon emplacements arrayed in concentric circles around the rockcrete keep dominating the island’s centre. They would not stop until they had hunted down every last creature from the first daemonic wave to have overrun the island.
‘I’m provoked,’ Sven said as the bolter echoes were snatched away by Svellgard’s cruel wind. ‘What’s the status of the Drakebanes?’
‘Ten of the pups still able to wield a chainsword.’
‘And the Firestones?’
‘Only five. Wergid is among the dead. The survivors are still hungry though.
As are our Wulfen.’
‘Then you shall lead them, Olaf. Vox Torvind, Kregga, Uuntir and Istun.
Have them return from the central bunkers and assemble here. And two Thunderhawks.’
‘ Godspear and Wolfdawn have both refuelled and rearmed. They are inbound from the fleet, expected arrival in ten minutes.’
‘Then they shall be the vehicles of our wrath. A wolf should never suffer a liar.’
In truth, Sven had not killed enough today. His heart still raced and his fingers itched. The thought of wyrdling filth defiling not just Svellgard, but all the worlds of his home system, brought up an instinctive urge to lash out.
He had not had word from any of the other battle-zones for hours – as far as he was aware Harald Deathwolf was still consolidating on nearby Frostheim, while Egil Iron Wolf and the Great Wolf were engaged on Midgardia. The daemonic taunts reached him again from across the narrow sea, and he shuddered.
They were wrong. Logan Grimnar was not dead. He couldn’t be.
‘To attack is unwise, my jarl,’ Olaf said, still watching the nearby island.
‘There are doubtless more such filth spawning from the rifts below the waves all about us. If we split our forces we invite annihilation.’
Sven turned to face his old packmate, and although rage still burned in the Wolf Lord’s grey eyes, his tattooed features and strong, stubble-lined jaw
were clenched with a tight smile.
‘Are your fangs getting too long for all this, Olaf?’ he asked. The Bloodguard champion returned his gaze levelly, without expression, too old to be so easily drawn.
‘Don’t tell me a hundred-odd kills are enough to sate you for one day?’
Sven pressed. ‘If the Bloodguard aren’t with me I’m sure the Oathbound would take your place? Or the Firewyrms?’
Olaf still said nothing, but there was a chill whisper of naked steel as his wolf claws slid free from his gauntlets.
‘If you wish to teach monsters not to lie,’ the Bloodguard said, ‘then I will be as happy as ever to assist with the lesson.’
Seven miles south of the Magma Gates, Midgardia
‘Logan Grimnar is dead.’
The daemon choked on the words, a flood of writhing maggots spilling from its locked jaw. Egil Iron Wolf slammed his boot down on the fallen plaguebearer’s skull, smashing it to a grey, squirming pulp.
‘Strike Force Morkai, come in,’ the Iron Wolf snapped into the vox. His only answer was static discord. It had been the same for over an hour now.
He fought back the urge to stamp down again on the plaguebearer as it sank back into the ooze that had once been the jungle floor.
‘ My jarl, we must return to the Ironfist . ’ The voice of Conran Wulfhide, the pack leader of his Ironguard, cut in over the link. ‘ We can’t stay out here.
This entire place is toxic. It will eat us alive. ’
Egil knew Conran was right, but still he hesitated. The purple spore jungles of Midgardia had been transformed beyond all recognition by Nurgle’s rotting touch, once-mighty trunks now swollen with blight and infested by gigantic maggots, their leaves turned black with decay. The ground underfoot had been reduced to a foetid, cloying pus-bog that writhed with worms and sightless, snapping maws. Egil’s Great Company had been battling through the corruption for hours, part of the two-pronged counter-attack designed to sweep the wyrdlings off Midgardia and retake its subterranean cities. The offensive, however, was becoming bogged down in every sense of the word.
Even worse, the runic Juvjk script that flashed across Egil’s visor warned him that the poisonous fug clouding the air was rapidly stripping away layer
after layer of his power armour. Even reinforced ceramite, sealed by the Iron Priests and blessed by the Wolf Priests, was no match for Midgardia’s acidic air. The rest of Egil’s Great Company was faring no better – howls of agony occasionally interrupted the vox chatter as the nightmarish atmosphere penetrated an unfortunate warrior’s armoured joints or ate through his visor’s lenses, causing flesh to blister and slough away in just a few heartbeats. Egil had ordered all packs to withdraw to the sealed interiors of their transports while he continued to try to make contact with Strike Force Morkai. With the Great Wolf, Logan Grimnar.
‘Back to Ironfist,’ Egil finally said. Around him heavy bolters and lascannons hammered and cracked as the armoured might of the Ironwolves
sought to keep the shuffling, slime-soaked Nurgle Tallybands at bay. For the past hour the droning wyrdspawn had showed little desire to close with the spearheads of Egil’s stalled advance, apparently content to soak up their firepower among the blighted trees and let the spores of the infested jungle do their work for them. Egil had been forced to halt his grinding offensive when the vox had lost all contact with Grimnar’s own thrust, which was supposed to have been keeping pace below, following Midgardia’s labyrinth of underground tunnels and passageways. Communication had been intermittent right from the beginning, but now it was gone entirely. And the counter-offensive wasn’t even a day old.
Egil was the last member of the Great Company to return to his transport, slamming the sealing rune on the hatch behind him. Within Ironfist’s red-lit hold Conran and the five other members of his pack waited, their grey battleplate befouled with a thick layer of pestilential filth. They were all that remained of Egil’s Ironguard. His Terminators had been lent to Grimnar when he had descended into Midgardia’s depths with the Champions of Fenris. He felt their loss almost as acutely as he did that of the Great Wolf himself. He activated the cogitator monitor bolted above the hold’s crew hatch, uploading the latest combat schematics to its gently pulsing screen display.
His Great Company had been divided into four Spears of Russ, one for each point on the map. Fists of Predator and Vindicator battle tanks supported Rhinos, Razorbacks and Land Raiders filled with the foot-packs. They’d punched out from their base at the Magma Gates and swept all before them.
Now, they were stalled and separated, the blinking runes representing each
Spear static and beset by assaulting icons.
The Midgardian defence forces acting as their reserves were suffering even worse, their fragile human physiologies no match for the deadliest of the Plague God’s diseases. Egil watched their casualty percentages for a moment, seeing them tick up steadily with each passing second. Even the most basic military mind would have acknowledged that their position had become an impossible one. The Iron Wolf activated his vox, blink-clicking to add the Ironwolf pack leaders from all four Spears to the channel.
‘This is Egil,’ he said. ‘Without word from Strike Force Morkai the gains we have made over the past two hours are no longer tenable. We must assume it is possible for wyrdspawn to infiltrate our interior lines through the unguarded tunnels below us. If they successfully break our Midgardian defence force reserves then each Spear of Russ will be cut off from the Magma Gates’ landing zones, as well as each other. I am therefore ordering Strike Force Fenris to withdraw by packs towards the Magma Gates. Once there we will commence a staggered withdrawal into orbit, starting with the defence forces and ending with my own Spear. Pack leaders, acknowledge.’
As confirmations trickled back down the link, Egil had to fight to stay silent.
His cold, calculated orders, so characteristic of the Iron Wolf, concealed the war which raged in his armour-plated breast. Logically a staged withdrawal was the only option. Strike Force Fenris had stalled deep inside an utterly inimical environment, was on the brink of overstretching even as it was outflanked, and the enemy’s numbers showed no sign of decreasing. To continue to advance ran the risk of seeing his entire Great Company overrun and annihilated, their remains eaten up by Midgardia’s hideous plague jungles.
But the Old Wolf was missing, somewhere below. If Egil took a backwards
step now he knew he would be forever remembered as the one who had abandoned Logan Grimnar. If he saved his Ironwolves by ordering a retreat, he damned himself forever in the eyes of his brothers. He snarled with frustration and keyed the vox again.
‘An addendum to the previous orders. Conran Wulfhide of my own pack will be assuming command of the Strike Force with immediate effect, until my return.’
Crusade & Other Stories - Dan Abnett Et Al. Page 11